Monthly Archives: February 2022

The Toronto Ultra is expected to team up with Danish esports organization Team Singularity for a Call of Duty Challengers lineup that will feature Canadian natives Xotic, Diamondcon, and Royalty alongside Torontos substitute player Hicksy, sources tell Dot Esports.

During Black Ops Cold War, Xotic, Diamondcon, and Royalty played the last half of the season together with Davpadie. The four of them won two Challengers events and then went on to place fourth in the North American Challengers Finals.

Heading into Vanguard, Davpadie was picked up by the Florida Mutineers and Parasite took his place in the Challengers lineup. They played three Challengers Cups at the start of the season with Parasite and placed fourth, then top-six twice.

Due to the team being expected to play under the Canadian franchise, Parasite was replaced by Ultras substitute player Hicksy. This eventually led to the veteran retiring from competitive Call of Duty just a few days later.

With Hicksy, the team placed top-32 in their first Challengers Cup, losing to PaulEhx, Venom, GRVTY, and Jimbo in round four. They then failed to qualify for the Elite Stage One over the weekend, finishing top-16.

The four are currently coached by Pajson, who previously coached last seasons European Challengers champions: Harry, Gismo, Nastie, and Vortex.

Team Singularity is expected to field a second Challengers roster in Europe, which could also be affiliated with the Toronto Ultra, according to multiple sources.

See original here:

Sources: Toronto Ultra in discussions to field a Challengers roster partnered with Team Singularity - Dot Esports

Christopher Walken is seemingly incapable of being boring. He can carry starring roles, as in the great gangster drama King of New York (1990) the sci-fi cult favorite The Dead Zone (1983) and the British comedy-thriller series The Outlaws, arriving this spring on Amazon Prime Video; spice up a supporting part (see this months Apple TV+ limited series thriller Severance); and electrify in a cameo, as those of us mesmerized by his classic monologue in Pulp Fiction (1994) can attest. But lets not pretend: Walken, who is 78, endures not simply for what he does but also for the singularity of who he is. No one looks like him, with his thick pompadour, sensuous, downturned lips and doleful eyes. No one talks like him all those offbeat cadences, delivered in a purr. No one even really performs like him: that blend of intellectual playfulness and physical precision. Its for those reasons that he is, and will remain, an icon of unorthodoxy. Somebody said to me once that I was foreign, says Walken, Queens-born, and a professional entertainer since he was a child. And I think, Yes, I come from the country of show business. He pauses, for a long moment, before alighting on the truth: There arent many people like me.

Even at your age youre still working all the time. Is there anything left in your life outside acting that you would like to accomplish or experience? I dont golf or play tennis. I have no kids. Ive been married for 53 years. I sometimes think about writing something, but I dont have much talent for that. You know, all actors have a trunk full of scripts. A lot of people do. Even my dentist at one point, when he was doing my teeth, told me about a script hed written. Ive written things. Theyre just not good enough. I start with two people sitting in a room talking and invariably it becomes incoherent. Theres nothing I can be other than an actor.

Do you ever consider writing a memoir? I do. I have yellow pads, stacks of them. One of these days I need somebody to help me get it organized. I was thinking of getting a court stenographer and just talking and having them write it down without any punctuation and seeing what would happen. Ive always resented punctuation.

Whys that? Because if youre performing, the writer will put a question mark after something or an exclamation point or even a period. It means that its the end of a thought and the beginning of another, whereas in life, conversation gets more schmeary. Sentences overlap. Thoughts overlap. Somebody told me an interesting thing: that the question mark is basically a hieroglyph.

Of a cats tail, right? Yes, of a cat walking away. Which is interesting, but dubious. Sometimes when I see a question mark in a script, Ill deliberately make it a statement. Or if something has an exclamation point, Ill make it a question just to see what will happen. Punctuation can be a stumbling block, so I take it out.

Christopher Walken (left) with John Cazale, center, and Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter (1978). Universal, via Everett Collection

Is it right that early on Zen was an influence on your acting? In the 70s when I was young and everybody was meditating, I probably went through my Zen phase. I tried meditating, but I would get into position and breathe and then my cat would walk in the room and run its tail across my face and that would be the end of my meditation. I wasnt a good meditator. I dont think Im very Zen. First of all, Im not quite sure what Zen is. When people talk about Zen Ive read the books: Zen in the Art of Archery; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Theres a very interesting book called The Still Point. I read all that but like I say, every time I think seriously about it, my cat comes and swipes his tail across my face.

Maybe thats a sign. Yes, that Ill never be Zen.

What else do you read? I look forward to The Sunday Times. My friend Geoffrey Holder used to say that theres nothing better on Sunday morning: The Times with a cup of coffee, in front of the fireplace. That is beautiful. And of course I read scripts. Even when I was young, it was very difficult for me to learn lines. Some actors pick up a script and seem to know the part. For me, its tedious and endless. Laurence Olivier used to call it pounding lines. Thats what it is. Youre pounding them into your head.

This is pure conjecture, but were you ever a big pot smoker? Sure.

Do you still smoke it? Sure.

What do you like to do when youre high? When I told that story about how my friend used to say Sunday morning, The New York Times and a good cup of coffee sitting in front of the fire, I failed to mention that he also said a couple of puffs on a joint.

Walken with Mary Stuart Masterson and Sean Penn (right) in At Close Range (1986). Orion, via Everett Collection

This is something that came up in my research, from an old magazine article: You used to worship the moon? No, I didnt worship the moon. [Laughs.] Lets put that to rest. I do enjoy looking at the moon. The moon is pretty terrific, but not for worshiping.

Ive been rewatching a bunch of your work, and theres one scene in particular that I want to ask you about. Its from a straight-to-video movie called All-American Murder. Your character is a cop who shows up to defuse a hostage situation and delivers this over-the-top profane monologue. Is this ringing any bells? I never saw that movie. Its remarkable that youre talking about it, because I never knew what happened to it. I dont remember much about that movie.

The reason Im bringing it up is that, in that scene anyway, it looks as if youre taking such delight in the performance, and it made me wonder about what you feel you can bring as an actor to a turkey like that. I imagine that its easier to know what to do with good material than bad material. I know what you mean. I remember making a movie once where they had me dye my hair this completely unnatural color. I argued, but they had their way, and there I was. So in every scene I was in, whomever I was talking to, my subtext was What do you think of my hair? No matter what I was talking about to anybody, I was thinking, What do you think of my hair? Are you looking at my hair? Isnt my hair horrible? It colored everything that I did, and I ended up being rather amusing but nobody knew why except me. Sometimes I do things just to amuse myself. Ive played scenes pretending that I was Elvis or Bugs Bunny or a U-boat commander. I just dont tell anybody.

Is that really true? Somebody said to me once, The truth is good, but interesting is better.

Walken in King of New York (1990). Seven Arts Entertainment, via Everett Collection

Do you still have a clause in your contract that any changes to your part cant be made without your approval? Its not a clause, but I do discuss that because it has to do with how long it takes me to learn lines. Often you take a job, and somewhere in the middle of it, they say, OK, were going to shoot this scene, and you say: I never saw that scene before. When am I supposed to learn that? So I ask people not to surprise me. Also, in my case, sometimes I take a job and then they decide to what Ive come to call Walkenize it. Suddenly Ill become a little more zany or wild. I prefer to play the part that I prepared for. I dont like surprises.

What does other peoples urge to Walkenize your roles suggest about how they see you? There arent many people from that country of show business who have been working since they were a little kid. Im from that place. If youre foreign, that equates with strange. Theres all sorts of xenophobia about people who are different. I think that has something to do with the parts that I get offered, and thats fine.

How were you shaped by being from the country of show business? It means youre from a place that has its own culture and customs and language and cooking; the kind of gypsy troubadour life, traveling around and the show must go on and hey-ho, the actors life for me fiddle-dee-dee. There arent a lot of people who have been immersed in that since they were children. Theres a saying: Give me a child at the age of 7 and I will show you the man. Thats probably true of show business too.

Walken in Pulp Fiction (1994). Miramax Films, via Everett Collection

Just to return to writing: The one thing you did write that got produced was a play about Elvis. I also know that his hairstyle was an inspiration for your own. Why was Elvis so formative for you? I remember the first time I heard about him. There was this girl named Janice. I guess I was 15 years old. I was crazy about this girl. I finally worked up the nerve to ask her to a dance. She said to me my name was Ronnie she said: Ronnie, I would love to go with you, but I have this boyfriend. Hes an older guy, and he would not like it if I did. Then she took out a wallet. Girls used to have these wallets with all these photographs inside. She showed me a picture of this guy. He was unbelievably handsome. I said: Wait a second. Thats not a photograph. You cut that out of a magazine. Im asking you to the dance. What is this? Youre giving me this jazz? She said: Its true. Hes this singer. His name is Elvis, and Im crazy about him. I said: Forget that. You dont even know him. Lets go to the dance. Anyway, I got a glimpse of Elvis and the hair. Thats where it all started. Elvis was fabulous. I wish Id known Elvis. I bet he was nice.

What would you want to ask him? I wouldnt want to ask him anything. I would just sit around with him. I was very upset about his death. That whole pill business. To this day, I go to the doctor and I say I have this or that, and he says, Ill give you a pill. If youre old and you want pills, you can get them prescribed for just about anything. I always say no thanks. It was too easy for Elvis to get those pills. He didnt take care of himself all those cheeseburgers. He should have eaten better. I think Elvis needed a good wife. Somebody to say, Elvis, enough. He was special. He was different. Poor old Elvis.

Walken with John Turturro (left) in Severance. Apple TV+

This is another question about acting: There are actors who transform and then there are performers, like yourself, who are pretty much always themselves. Can you explain what that distinction means for how you play a role? Id have to emphasize that when I talk about that, Im talking strictly about me, that having come to being an actor sort of accidentally through being a dancer, my approach has to do with what I did as a dancer: rhythm, hearing the beat, responding physically probably different than most actors come at it. I didnt go to acting class until I was already working as an actor. So I think of myself as a performer. Its important to entertain. People buy a ticket, and they sit there and they watch you. I hope that its interesting, that its entertaining, that its fun. That word fun is banged around, but its a rather serious word. Its important to have fun.

How do you have fun? Working. Most of the time. The car ride home from the set at the end of the day: You get in the car to go back to the hotel, and the best thing is to think, I was good today. A terrible feeling is to sit in the car and think, I could have done that much better. For me, it boils down to things like that: How do you feel when you go home in the car?

Sean Penn once said that trying to define you was like trying to define a cloud, and you really do have this ethereal quality. Im curious to know whats a solid, concrete thing that matters to you in your day-to-day life? Gee, thats a hard thing for me to address. Every once in a while certainly not often Ill be looking out the window, and Ill think, I feel pretty good. My bills are paid, my wife is healthy, the weathers nice. Thats really all I care about: when, apropos of nothing, I happen to look out the window and think, This is good.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

Opening illustration: Source photograph by Stephane de Sakutin/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Brian Cox about the filthy rich, Dr. Becky about the ultimate goal of parenting and Tiffany Haddish about Gods sense of humor.

More here:

Christopher Walken Shares the Secrets of Acting Like Christopher Walken - The New York Times

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

DeepMind Says Its New AI Coding Engine Is as Good as an Average Human ProgrammerJames Vincent | The VergeDeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says writes computer programs at a competitive level. The Alphabet subsidiary tested its system against coding challenges used in human competitions and found that its program achieved an estimated rank placing it within the top 54 percent of human coders.

The US Is Testing Robotic Patrol Dogs on Its BordersJames Vincent | The VergeIn a detailedblog post, the DHS outlined how its tested the robot dogs for potential work on the border. The machines have been trialed for outdoor sentry duty, autonomously patrolling pre-set GPS waypoints while carrying cameras and sensors; for inspections of train cars at railyards, walking around and under carriages; and exploring residential buildings, including a scenario that simulated being met by potentially hostile individuals.'

North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its InternetAndy Greenberg | WiredBut responsibility for North Koreas ongoing internet outages doesnt lie withUS Cyber Commandor any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watchingAlienmovies and eating spicy corn snacksand periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

NASA Details Plan to Retire ISS in 2030 and Deliberately Crash It Into the Pacific OceanGeorge Dvorsky | GizmodoThe writings been on the wall for some time now, but NASA made it official earlier this week,announcing that ISS operations will last until 2030 but no further. Upon retirement, the space station will perform a controlled re-entry and crash onto a remote part of the Pacific ocean known as Point Nemo. Its all part of NASAs plan to hand over space station responsibilities to the private sector and save a whole lotta cash in the process.

The 4-Day Workweek Is Flawed. Workers Still Want ItCaitlin Harrington | WiredFour-day workweeks are having a moment, thanks to widely publicized trials launched in several countries in the past few months, alongside companies marking the switch with splashy announcements. WIRED spoke to 15 workers at six tech companies that have adopted a shortened week. Employees generally approved; some saw it as a mixed blessing, while others considered it a godsend.'

This Company Says Its Developing a System That Can Recognize Your Face From Just Your DNATate Ryan-Mosley | MIT Technology ReviewThe science that would be needed to support such a system doesnt yet exist, however, and experts say the product would exacerbate the ethical, privacy, and bias problems facial recognition technology already causes. More worryingly, its a signal of the industrys ambitions for the future, where face detection becomes one facet of a broader effort to identify people by any available meanseven inaccurate ones.

How Facebook Is Morphing Into MetaSheera Frenkel, Mike Isaac and Ryan Mac | The New York TimesSince then, Meta has pursued a sweeping transformation, current and former employees said. It has created thousands of new jobs in the labs that make hardware and software for the metaverse. Managers have urged employees who worked on social networking products to apply for those augmented reality and virtual reality roles. The company has poached metaverse engineers from rivals includingMicrosoftandApple. And it has officially rebranded some products, like its Oculus virtual-reality headsets, with the Meta name.

Big Tech Needs to Stop Trying to Make Their Metaverse HappenGian M. Volpicelli | WiredThe open Metaverse is the Promised Land, where tech monopolies would be brought to heel, everyone would be in charge of their data and digital assets, and users would be involved in setting the course of the network as a whole. It is a tentative, hypothetical project, but one thing about it is clear: Big Tech should not be in control. A Metaverse built by them would be no Metaverse at all.

Image Credit:Simone Hutsch / Unsplash

Originally posted here:

This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 5) - Singularity Hub

New Delhi:The proceedings of the Rajya Sabha on Monday were adjourned for an hour as a mark of respect to Lata Mangeshkar.

Soon after the House assembled at 10 a.m., Chairman Venkaiah Naidu expressed sorrow at the passing away of Lata Mangeshkar. Her singing prowess has been as diverse as our country, he said.

Lata ji knitted our nation by representing us collectively and each one of us in our singularity. Besides defining the golden standard of playback singing through thousands of her melodious songs in many languages, she captured every mood, moment and journey of our nation for over seven decades.

Her distinguished and long career ran parallel to that of free India over the last 75 years, capturing the trials and tribulations of the times. India is struck silent with her passing away in the 75th year of Independence, the RS Chairman said.

He also said that she was a great philanthropist and founded the Lata Mangeshkar Medical Foundation, a public charitable trust which contributes towards the medical expenses of needy patients irrespective of caste, creed and religion. She also started Master Deenanath Mangeshkar Smruti Pratishthan, which provides assistance to students and contributes to the welfare of senior citizens, he added.

Lataji also served as a Nominated Member of this House from November 1999 to November, 2005.

Describing her contribution to the field of music, he said that she recorded over 25,000 songs and she captured every mood and journey of our country for over seven decades.

She was bestowed with several awards like Padma Bhushan in 1999, Rajiv Gandhi Award in 1997, Bharat Ratna in 2001 apart from many other awards for her songs. She was also awarded with the Dada Saheb Phalke award in 1989.

Naidu said, The country has lost a legendary playback singer created an irreparable void in the world of music.

The Members of the House stood in silence for a while in respect to the departed soul and the proceedings of the House were adjourned by the Chairman.

In the Lok Sabha too, soon after the House meets at 4 p.m., Speaker Om Birla will read out the obituary message for Lata Mangeshkar and will adjourn the proceedings for an hour, sources said.

See the article here:

RS adjourned for an hour as mark of respect to Lata Mangeshkar - The Siasat Daily

Our eyes are continuously bombarded by an enormous amount of visual informationmillions of shapes, colors, and ever-changing motion all around us. For the brain, this is no easy feat. On the one hand, the visual world alters continuously because of changes in light, viewpoint, and other factors. On the other, our visual input constantly changes due to blinking and the fact that our eyes, head, and body are frequently in motion.

To get an idea of the noisiness of this visual input, place a phone in front of your eyes and record a live video while you are walking around and looking at different things. The jittery, messy result is exactly what your brain deals with in every moment of your visual experience. This can be seen also in the video below. The white circle on the right shows potential eye movements, and the blurry blob on the left reveals the jumpy visual input in every moment.

Yet, seeing never feels like work for us. Rather than perceiving the fluctuations and visual noise that a video might record, we perceive a consistently stable environment. So how does our brain create this illusion of stability? This process has fascinated scientists for centuries and it is one of the fundamental questions in vision science.

In our latest research, we discovered a new mechanism that, among others, can explain this illusory stability. The brain automatically smoothes our visual input over time. Instead of analyzing every single visual snapshot, we perceive in a given moment an average of what we saw in the past 15 seconds. So, by pulling together objects to appear more similar to each other, our brain tricks us into perceiving a stable environment. Living in the past can explain why we do not notice subtle changes that occur over time.

In other words, the brain is like a time machine which keeps sending us back in time. Its like an app that consolidates our visual input every 15 seconds into one impression so that we can handle everyday life. If our brains were always updating in real time, the world would feel like a chaotic place with constant fluctuations in light, shadow, and movement. We would feel like we were hallucinating all the time.

We created an illusion to illustrate how this stabilization mechanism works. Looking at the video below, the face on the left side slowly ages for 30 seconds, and yet, it is very difficult to notice the full extent of the change in age. In fact, observers perceive the face as aging more slowly than it actually is.

To test this illusion we recruited hundreds of participants and asked them to view close-ups of faces morphing chronologically in age in 30-second time lapse videos. When asked to tell the age of the face at the very end of the video, the participants almost consistently reported the age of the face that was presented 15 seconds before.

As we watch the video, we are continuously biased towards the past, and so the brain constantly sends us back to the previous 10 to 15 seconds (where the face was younger). Instead of seeing the latest image in real time, humans actually see earlier versions because our brains refresh time is about 15 seconds. So this illusion demonstrates that visual smoothing over time can help stabilize perception.

What the brain is essentially doing is procrastinating. Its too much work to constantly deal with every single snapshot it receives, so the brain sticks to the past because the past is a good predictor of the present. Basically we recycle information from the past because its more efficient, faster, and less work.

This ideawhich is also supported by other resultsof mechanisms within the brain that continuously bias our visual perception towards our past visual experience is known as continuity fields. Our visual system sometimes sacrifices accuracy for the sake of a smooth visual experience of the world around us. This can explain why, for example, when watching a film we dont notice subtle changes that occur over time, such as the difference between actors and their stunt doubles.

There are positive and negative implications to our brains operating with this slight lag when processing our visual world. The delay is great for preventing us from feeling bombarded by visual input every day, but it can also risk life-or-death consequences when absolute precision is needed.

For example, radiologists examine hundreds of images in batches, seeing several related images one after the other. When looking at an X-ray, clinicians are typically asked to identify any abnormalities and then classify them. During this visual search and recognition task, researchers have found that radiologists decisions were based not only on the present image, but also on images they had previously seen, which could have grave consequences for patients.

Our visual systems sluggishness to update can make us blind to immediate changes because it grabs on to our first impression and pulls us toward the past. Ultimately, though, continuity fields promote our experience of a stable world. At the same time, its important to remember that the judgements we make every day are not totally based on the present, but strongly depend on what we have seen in the past.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

Continue reading here:

Everything We See Is a Mash-Up of the Brain's Last 15 Seconds of Visual Information - Singularity Hub