This article examines what happens to the price of the Guinness pint outside of Ireland.
In almost all cases, the price of a pint of Guinness gets cheaper when it leaves Ireland. In some cases the difference is enormous.
Zero-Width Characters
This article shows a couple of interesting zero-width characters techniques for the invisible fingeprinting of text.
In early 2016 I realized that it was possible to use zero-width characters, like zero-width non-joiner or other zero-width characters like the zero-width space to fingerprint text. Even with just a single type of zero-width character the presence or non-presence of the non-visible character is enough bits to fingerprint even the shortest text.
[…]
I also realized that it is possible to use homoglyph substitution (e.g., replacing the letter “a” with its Cyrillic counterpart, “а”), but I dismissed this as too easy to detect due to the differences in character rendering across fonts and systems. However, differences in dashes (en, em, and hyphens), quotes (straight vs curly), word spelling (color vs colour), and the number of spaces after sentence endings could probably go undetected due to their frequent use in real text.
[…]
The reason I’m writing about this now is that it appears both homoglyph substitution and zero-width fingerprintinghave been discovered by others, so journalists should be informed of the existence of these techniques.
How an A.I. ‘Cat-and-Mouse Game’ Generates Believable Fake Photos
The New York Times is running a very fascinating article on the progress of the artificial intelligence and machine learning in both identifying and generating fake photos – How an A.I. ‘Cat-and-Mouse Game’ Generates Believable Fake Photos.  The above image shows the progress of the AI working against itself and learning from its own results – one part is trying to identify if the photo is fake or not, and the other part is trying to generate a fake photo which will pass the test. When the test fails, the system learns, improves, and tries again. Look at the last row of photos, which are super realistic and took the system between 10 to 18 days to learn how to generate.
But that’s not all. It gets better, and I quote:
A second team of Nvidia researchers recently built a system that can automatically alter a street photo taken on a summer’s day so that it looks like a snowy winter scene. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have designed another that learns to convert horses into zebras and Monets into Van Goghs. DeepMind, a London-based A.I. lab owned by Google, is exploring technology that can generate its own videos. And Adobe is fashioning similar machine learning techniques with an eye toward pushing them into products like Photoshop, its popular image design tool.
Here are a few more photos that were generated:
This is remarkable. But if you keep reading the article, you’ll quickly discover that there is even more to it. What’s next in line after pictures? You are correct: videos. You better sit down before you watch this video, showing Obama’s lip sync:
So, can’t trust the TV. Can’t trust the Internet. Who do you trust?
Morten Rand-Hendriksen: Gutenberg and the WordPress of Tomorrow
If you are working with WordPress in any capacity, you have to watch this talk. Or at least the first 25 minutes (before the Q&A). If you are involved with web publishing or web design, you have to watch it. If you are a web enthusiast, you have to watch it.  If you are not involved with the web at all, you definitely have to watch it, as you’ll have an idea of where things are going, and you might decide to get involved.
Just watch it!
Products Over Projects
Martin Fowler has an excellent article on the “Products Over Projects” subject. It depicts the differences of both, with advantages and disadvantages, especially in areas like funding, team management, and iterations.
It’s a great read for anybody involved in software development, product and project management.