Hello! Im Andrew Chen (eaacon).Ive been lurking for a while and I began my transition from a 2D artist and hobbyist programmer to a VFX artist since graduating college. For the past few months Ive been grinding at learning the craft, starting with Sirhaians Shuriken tutorials and studying Shannon Berke McSheehans amazing mini knowledge shares. After a ton of practice work (Some of which I may also post in the future), and a custom Blender addon later, I finally finished my portfolio/demo reel.Take a look! And thanks for your time.

Community organizers in Philadelphias Chinatown woke up to joyous news this morning after the Sixers announced yesterday the franchise has abandoned its plans for a new stadium in Center Citys Market East corridor. The master plan for the scrapped $1.3 billion mixed-use stadium project, dubbed 76 Place, was by Gensler. Instead of moving to Chinatown, the team will remain in the South Philadelphia stadium district. Wells Fargo Center will be demolished and a new purpose-built home for the Sixers and Flyers will be built in its place. The stadium could also be home to a future WNBA team pending a successful bid for one, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said at a press conference this morning.Parker, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, 76ers Managing Partner Josh Harris, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, and other 76 DevCo. officials such as David Adelman addressed the decision at a press conference this morning. We are still committed to revitalizing the Market East corridor, Adelman said, however what that revitalization will look like minus the stadium is to be determined. This is a curve ball none of us saw coming. Weve been talking around the clock the last 72 hours, Parker said. The Philadelphia Mayor added that a new master plan for the Market East corridor will be fast tracked, and significantly informed by community input. Parker also pointed to The Battery in Atlanta, where the Braves play, as an example of what shed like to see in South Philadelphia for the new stadium.Wanda Sykes, the comedian and actor, was also at the press conference. Sykes is helping lead the effort to bring a WNBA franchise to Philadelphia, and will help broker negotiations with the South Philadelphia stadium team.On Saturday, September 7, almost 4,000 people showed up outside Philadelphia City Hall to protest a new basketball arena by Gensler in Philadelphias Chinatown. (Courtesy Save Chinatown Coalition)The stadium proposal in Chinatown was protested heavily. More than 39,000 people signed a petition against the arena, and a survey showed that 69 percent of Philadelphians opposed the project. The development team behind 76 Place countered this petition by starting their own petition, which garnered over 30,000 names who supported the arena. Groups like No Arena in the Heart of Our City Coalition partnered with anti-gentrification organizations across Philadelphia to stop 76 Place from happening. Were relieved to hear that the nightmare of a Center City Sixers arena will not haunt our city any more, the No Arena Coalition said in a statement.To every Philadelphian who called, marched, testified, and warned City Hall that this was a raw deal: This win belongs to you, and the lesson for politicians is to trust the people, No Arena added. To the five Councilmembers who stood on the right side of this fight: We will not forget.(Courtesy Save Chinatown Coalition)The No Arena Coalition continued: We were clear from day one that it was dangerous to play in the viper pit with billionaires, but City Hall toyed with the snakes, and they got bit. 12 of 17 Councilmembers turned their backs on decades of research on the false promise of stadium developments, common sense, their voters, and the 70% of Philadelphians who opposed this arena.The activist group also expressed discontent with how the stadium planning process unfolded. This sham of a process laid bare what Philadelphians have long known, the group elaborated.Anti-stadium activists rented an airplane to send the development team behind 76 Place a message. (Courtesy Save Chinatown Coalition)Decisions about the future of neighborhoods are not being made by the people of those communities nor with their best interest in mind, but by a select few who represent their own benefits and bank accounts and a City Hall thats bought and paid for, No Arena said. As planning for the future of Center City continues, lessons must be learned, and the city needs a new class of politicians who respond to peoples needs instead of corporate greed.The new stadium in South Philadelphia is slated to open in 2031.Gensler had no comment for this story.

Fluffy-Tailed Ticked Dog (2022), hand-hooked mostly-wool yarn on linen. All images courtesy of Emily OLeary, shared with permissionLifelike Canines Lounge in Emily OLeary Uncanny Hooked RugsJanuary 13, 2025ArtCraftKate MothesMost dogs spend at least half of their day asleepsome getting zs for upwards of 18 hours. Whether curled up on the floor or enjoying a long-legged stretch, the subjects of Emily OLearys rugs evoke our beloved pets.Based on photographs of actual dogs, she focuses mostly on animals the artist doesnt know. I like to hook dogs that are pretty mutty looking, that dont look like yard-bound Golden Retrievers or Doodles, she tells Colossal. Im attracted to the shared history of humans and dogshow the bulk of their domestication may have happened somewhat inadvertently.Injured Elbow Dog (2020), hand-hooked wool yarn on linenEmploying a carpet-making technique called rug hooking, the earliest form of which can be traced to Northern England in the early 19th century, OLeary spends several months on a single piece. Compared to tufting, Its a slower, more traditional process, she says, but the process allows each individual loop to be applied at a different height, giving her the ability to create three-dimensional reliefs.OLeary learned to make rugs after predominantly focusing on embroidery. When some friends organized an exhibition themed around dogs, she had the idea to make a work in the shape of a life-size canine. Im lucky that the rugs sort of do inspire tender feelings in the people who see them, but that theyre also a bit uncanny, she says.The pieces weight and realistic details engender an intimate connection as they come to life, so to speak. I really feel like Ive built a relationship with the object, she says, adding: Sometimes the dogs I hook have wounds or scars. The dog rug Im working on right now is missing a little chunk of her ear. I want to depict them as they are, not stuffed animal versions.Find more on OLearys website and Instagram.Brown and Black Dog (2021), hand-hooked wool yarn on linenDetail of Mottled-leg Dog (2024), hand-hooked wool yarn on linenSandy Reddish Dog (2023), hand-hooked mostly-wool yarn on linenPhoto by Bucky MillerPhoto by Bucky MillerNext article

The UKs National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has joined forces with its Five Eyes partners and other agencies from the European Union (EU) to publish a new guide designed help critical national infrastructure (CNI) bodies and others that rely on operational technology (OT) demand improved security in products when making buying decisions.With operators of CNI under near-constant threat from malicious actors many of them working at the behest of hostile intelligence agencies the NCSC said it was aiming to provide clear guidance on choosing products and manufacturers that adhere to secure-by-design principles, giving their own systems a resilient foundation and minimising the risks posed by cyber attacks.Historically, such components have not been developed with security as a priority or in many cases at all giving threat actors an open window to access their tech estates, one that is becoming much wider as more and more OT components connects into wider IT systems.Moreover, such components are often heavily targeted because a successful compromise can be easily replicated across multiple victims.As cyber attackers increasingly target operational technology around the world, it has never been more vital for critical infrastructure operators to ensure security is baked into the systems they use, said NCSC director of national resilience and future technology, Jonathan Ellison.This new guide gives organisations practical advice on how to prioritise OT products that are secure by design when making purchasing decisions, helping to mitigate the very real cyber threats they face.I strongly advise UK operators of OT systems to follow this guidance to help set a strong foundation for their cyber resilience and to send a signal to manufacturers that security is more than just an extra feature for products but a requirement in demand.The guidance, which is officially available to download from the website of the NCSCs American counterpart CISA, lays down 12 security considerations that OT users should integrate into their procurement process, both to help defend themselves, and to force manufacturers to do better.The considerations buyers should look to and the answer to these questions should always be yes are as follows:Does the product support controlling and tracking modifications to configuration settings and engineering logic?Does the baseline product support logging of all actions, including changes to configuration, security and safety events, using open standard formats?Does the product use open standards to support secure functionality and services, and to migrate configuration settings and engineering logic?Does the product give owners and operators full autonomy over it, including the ability to conduct maintenance and make other changes, and minimise dependence on the supplier?Does the product protect the integrity and confidentiality of data, services and functions, including configuration settings and engineering logic, both at rest and in transit?Does the product arrive secure out-of-the-box, reducing attack surfaces and removing the burden on owners by including all security features in all versions, eliminating default passwords and allowing for complex ones, with older protocols disabled by default, not exposing external interfaces, and giving users the ability to reset them to their original state?Does the product support secure authenticated communications that fail loudly but let critical processes continue, and that do not require significant cyber skills to achieve?Does the product come with secure controls that guard it against threat actors sending malicious commands, protect the availability of essential functions, and minimise the impact of an incident on wider systems?Does the baseline version of the product appropriately protect against unauthorised access through measures such as multifactor authentication or role-based access control?Does the product have a full, detailed threat model that lays out how it might be compromised, and measures to reduce such scenarios?Does the product manufacturer have a vulnerability disclosure and management programme in place, including testing, support and management, and free patching?Does the product have a well-documented and straightforward patching and upgrade process that enables users to move to a supported operating system gratis if the original can no longer be supported?CISA director Jen Easterly, writing today, compared the current situation to the period just before public pressure forced car manufacturers to start to build in safety features such as seatbelts, anti-lock breaks and so on as standard. In the US, outrage over sky-high road fatalities was driven by the publication 60 years ago of a landmark text, Unsafe At Any Speed, by consumer advocate and politician Ralph Nader.We dont have a cyber security problem; we have a software quality problem, said Easterly. We are now at a tipping point with foreign adversaries rampantly exploiting defective software where this recognition is leading to a concerted demandfor better security.Just as automobile safety reforms only succeeded when the public demanded safer cars as a basic standard, the software industry will only prioritise secure design when wedemand it as the baseline for a functioning, secure, digital ecosystem.The secure-by-design initiative supports this demand by equipping customers with key questions to ask vendors about their software just as public safety campaigns taught the nation how to evaluate the safety features of their cars. By empowering users, we aim to create a seismic shift in software security.Read more about OT securityMore companies are tasking CISOs with operational technology security. But this oversight means a new strategy for those unfamiliar with building an effective OT security programme.Securing operational technology is particularly critical but also especially challenging. Consider these top OT threats and how to manage them.Keeping operational technology secure requires vigilance and effort, especially as OT increasingly converges with IT. These cyber security best practices can help.

Google searches on removing Instagram and Threads accounts also rose in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg's announcement last week.

Parents and guardians seeking allies in ensuring children arent exposed to bad actors and harmful content are turning to social media platforms for help.

By Billy PerrigoJanuary 13, 2025 12:37 PM ESTThe Biden Administrations move on Jan. 13 to curb exports on the advanced computer chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI) arrived in the wake of two major events over the Christmas holidays that rattled the world of AI.First, OpenAI released its latest model, o3, which achieved an 88% on a set of difficult reasoning tests on which no AI system had previously scored above 5%. All intuition about AI capabilities will need to get updated in light of the results, said Francois Chollet, a former AI researcher at Google and a prominent skeptic of the argument that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be achieved any time soon.Second, the Chinese company DeepSeek released an open-source AI model that outperformed any American open-source language model, including Metas Llama series. The achievement surprised many AI researchers and U.S. officials, who had believed China lagged behind in terms of AI capabilities. Somehow, DeepSeek had managed to create a world-class AI model in spite of a global embargo, led by the U.S. government, on the sale of advanced AI chips to China.Taken together, the two developments made something clear: I think AGI will probably get developed during this presidents term, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Bloomberg in January, meaning that technology powerful enough to carry out economically valuable work and make new scientific discoveries by itself would emerge in the next four years under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Whats more: China appeared to be catching up in the race to get there first.For some U.S. officials, those realizations only underlined what they had been arguing for years: restricting Chinas access to AI was now essential for U.S. national security. Whichever superpower achieves AGI first, the thinking goes, is likely to obtain a decisive strategic advantage, reap new scientific discoveries, wield powerful new weapons and surveillance technologies, and leave its competitors economy in the rear-view mirror.Under Biden, the U.S. government had intensified a policy that began during Trumps first term: using the power of export controls to limit the number of advanced chips that China could obtain to impede its attempts to reach parity with the U.S. on AI. Despite measures that made the export of advanced chips to China illegal in 2022, Beijing had nevertheless succeeded in stockpiling thousands of chips to build its own AI systems thanks to an international smuggling network. The pure power of DeepSeek v3 strongly suggested that those chips were being used to train AI at the cutting edge.And so, with just a week until Trumps return to the White House, the Biden Administration added finishing touches to its existing chip sanctions. The new rules attempt to make it even harder for China to obtain cutting-edge AI chips via smuggling, by establishing new quotas and license requirements for the sale of advanced chips to all but Americas closest allies.If the Trump Administration does not act to repeal the measure, the policy will take effect in 120 days. I think it is quite likely that the Trump Administration will find this policy appealing, and the reason is that we are in a critical moment in AI technology competition with China, says Greg Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. Contrary to rumors of AIs progress reaching a plateau, OpenAIs o3 model shows new capabilities are continuing to emerge rapidly, Allen says, leading many in Washington and Silicon Valley to bring forward their predictions of when they think AGI will arrive. And while Trump himself is unpredictable, many of the aides and policymakers set to occupy senior positions in his Administration are China hawks. It matters a lot that the United States gets there before China, says Allen, who supports the Biden Administration's new rules. It is a pretty decisive move to make life much harder for Chinas AI ecosystem.Trump will face appeals from those urging him to repeal the new rules. Nvidia, which controls more than 90% of the U.S. AI chip industry, blasted the Biden Administration in a statement, arguing that the restrictions would hand market share to China. By attempting to rig market outcomes and stifle competition the lifeblood of innovation the Biden Administrations new rule threatens to squander Americas hard-won technological advantage, said the statement, authored by Nvidias president of government affairs Ned Finkle. The company also flattered Trump in the same statement, crediting him with laying the foundation for Americas current strength and success in AI.Allen agrees that they might push buyers toward China. But not fast enough, he says. It takes five to 10 years for a chipmaker to turn even huge investments into machines capable of making advanced new chips, and China simply doesnt have that time, assuming AGI is on the horizon. They are really stuck because they cannot get the advanced equipment that they need, Allen says. The alternative to American AI chips isnt Chinese AI chips. Its no AI chips.

A hot potato: The open-source project llama2.c is designed to run a lightweight version of the Llama 2 model entirely in C code. This "baby" Llama 2 model is inspired by llama.cpp, a project created to enable LLM inference across a wide range of hardware, from local devices to cloud-based platforms. These compact code experiments are now being leveraged to run AI technology on virtually any device with a chip, highlighting the growing accessibility and versatility of AI tools. After seeing Exo Labs run a large language model on an ancient Pentium II running Windows 98, developer Andrei David decided to take on an even more unconventional challenge. Dusting off his Xbox 360 console, he set out to force the nearly two-decade-old machine to load an AI model from Meta AI's Llama family of LLMs.David shared on X that he successfully ported llama2.c to Microsoft's 2005-era gaming console. However, the process wasn't without significant hurdles. The Xbox 360's PowerPC CPU is a big-endian architecture, which required extensive endianness conversion for both the model's configuration and weights. Additionally, he had to deal with substantial adjustments and optimizations to the original code to make it work on the aging hardware.Memory management posed yet another significant challenge. The 60MB llama2 model had to be carefully structured to fit within the Xbox 360's unified memory architecture, where the CPU and GPU share the same pool of RAM. According to David, the Xbox 360's memory architecture was remarkably forward-thinking for its time, foreshadowing the memory management techniques now standard in modern gaming consoles and APUs.After extensive coding and optimization, David successfully ran llama2 on his Xbox 360 using a simple prompt: "Sleep Joe said." Despite the llama2 model being just 700 lines of C code with no external dependencies, David noted that it can deliver "surprisingly" strong performance when tailored to a sufficiently narrow domain.David explained that working within the constraints of a limited platform like the Xbox 360 forces you to prioritize efficient memory usage above all else. In response, another X user suggested that the 512MB of memory on Microsoft's old console might be sufficient to run other small LLM implementations, such as smolLM, created by AI startup Hugging Face.The developer gladly accepted the challenge, so we will likely see additional LLM experiments on Xbox 360 in the not-so-distant future. // Related Stories

Numbers are the greatest weapon in the trailer for Prime Target, a new Apple TV+ conspiracy thriller starring Leo Woodall and Quintessa Swindell.Edward Brooks (Woodall) is a gifted mathematician searching for sequences in prime numbers. What if numbers didnt behave the way we assume? Edward tells his professor (David Morrissey). What Edward doesnt realize is that his work could be the foundation for a virtual key that opens every digital lock in the world. If this weapon gets into the wrong hands, it will lead to worldwide panic and chaos.Recommended VideosBecause his knowledge is extremely valuable, Edward becomes the target of many nefarious organizations. Enter Taylah Sanders (Swindell), an NSA agent sent to protect Edward. As the duo works together, they soon uncover a conspiracy threatening the worlds future.Please enable Javascript to view this contentI wanna fight back, Edward tells Taylah, who says, Lets burn them all to hell.Prime Target Official Trailer | Apple TV+Prime Targetsensemble includes Stephen Rea, Martha Plimpton, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Jason Flemyng, Harry Lloyd, Ali Suliman, Fra Fee, and Joseph Mydell.Prime Targetis created by Steve Thompson, who also serves as an executive producer with Ridley Scott, Ed Rubin, Beth Pattinson, Emma Broughton, Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Marina Brackenbury, David W. Zuker, and Laura Hastings-Smith. Executive producer Brady Hood directs all eight episodes.Prime Targetis not the only high-profile Apple TV+ drama premiering in January. SeveranceThe first two episodes ofPrime Targetstream globally on January 22, 2025, on Apple TV+. One episode will be released weekly every Wednesday through March 5.Editors Recommendations

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