Tag: Youtube

Robots learn from Youtube

Posted on January 13, 2015 by - News


Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 14.28.53It’s not just people that are addicted to Youtube, according to a group of scientists from the University of Maryland.
They are teaching robots by getting them to watch online cooking videos.
The scientists say they, together with an Australian research institute, are developing robotic systems that can teach themselves.
The online cooking videos help them to learn intricate grasping and manipulation movements.
The researchers said they’ve achieved a milestone in robotic autodidactism by combining artificial intelligence, computer vision; and natural language processing.
Yiannis Alimonos, a professor of computer science said the team selected cooking videos “because everyone has done it and understands it.”
But, he continued, “cooking is complex in terms of manipulation, the steps involved and the tools you use”.
The professor said other researchers had tried to copy movements, but the team is copying the goals, letting robots decide how to combine actions.  The algorithm use deep learning neural networks, which are now practical because of the vast increase in computing power and performance.

 

Facebook buys into video

Posted on January 9, 2015 by - News

thumb-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-pro-4566In a bid to outdo Google’s YouTube, Facebook said yesterday it had bought San Diego company QuickFire.
QuickFire is a private company so financial details of the deal are unavailable.
The company makes technology that reduces the bandwidth to look at films online without compromising on quality.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook said in a prepared statement that video was an “essential part” of Facebook which currently has 1.3 billion people online which use it.
The 20 strong team will move into Facebook’s HQ in Menlo Park, California.
According to Facebook itself, more people now upload videos to the social networking site. Facebook is looking for advertising dollars – YouTube turns in a pretty penny for its owner Google by leveraging video ads as lead ins to music and videos.

 

Gangham Style nearly broke YouTube

Posted on December 4, 2014 by - News

0921-gangnam-style_full_600Gangnam Style, the South Korean pop star’s enduring video phenomenon from 2012, nearly broke YouTube by getting more than 2,147,483,647 views and creating a sort of Y2K fault.

The site’s original view counter was not designed to take that many hits and its developers could not believe that a video would be watched by numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (2,147,483,647 views).

Google, which owns YouTube, in a blog post this week. ” ‘Gangnam Style’ has been viewed so many times we had to upgrade!”

When programmers built YouTube nine years ago, they probably never imagined that a video on the young platform — back when several million views was considered a smash hit — might be watched more than 2.1 billion times.

As of late Wednesday morning, “Gangnam Style” had breached the barrier, showing more than 2,152,512,000 views.

Fortunately YouTube did not collapse with smoke pouring out of a server.  YouTube’s software engineers saw the problem coming and recently updated to a 64-bit view counter across the site, Google spokesman Matt McLernon said. The view counter can now go up to 9 quintillion views (9,223,372,036,854,775,808, to be exact), which should hold PSY for a while.

“Nothing actually broke,” McLernon said. “There was never anything that actually went wrong. It’s just people having fun with the language.”

PSY’s trademark horse-riding dance video, is almost 2½ years old and was uploaded in July 2012, “Gangnam Style” was the first clip to hit a billion views and is the most-watched video of all time. It was even the 5th most-played video on YouTube this past summer.

“People still play this video an absurd number of times,” he said.

To commemorate the occasion, YouTube has added a new wrinkle: If you hover your cursor over the “Gangnam Style” view counter, the numbers spin backwards and forwards.

Microsoft allowed to execute Bladabindi and Jenxcus

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - News

GuillotineSoftware giant Microsoft has been given permission to disrupt malware by known as Bladabindi and Jenxcus, writes Nick Farrell.

Although Vole has worked with the FBI and others to disrupt communications channels between hackers and infected PCs, it is rare to act on its own. This is also the first high-profile case involving malware written by developers outside of Eastern Europe.

The operation, which began on Monday under an order issued by a federal court in Nevada, Microsoft said the two malwares operated in similar ways and were written and distributed by developers in Kuwait and Algeria.

Microsoft said that it would take days to determine how many machines were infected. Voles’ own, anti-virus software alone has detected some 7.4 million infections over the past year and is installed on less than 30 percent of the world’s PCs.

The developers marketed their malware over social media, including videos on YouTube and a Facebook page. They posted videos with techniques for infecting PCs.

The court order allowed Microsoft to disrupt communications between infected machines and Reno, Nevada-based Vitalwerks Internet Solutions.

Boscovich said about 94 percent of all machines infected with the two viruses communicate with hackers through Vitalwerks servers.

Registries will direct suspected malicious traffic to Microsoft servers in Redmond, Washington, instead of to Vitalwerks.

Vole will then filter out communications from PCs infected with another 194 types of malware also being filtered through Vitalwerks.

Vitalwerks and its operational subsidiary No-IP claim to have a very strict abuse policy. To be fair Microsoft has not accused Vitalwerks of involvement in any cybercrime, though it alleges the company failed to take proper steps to prevent its system from being abused.