It’s hard to picture Jason Momoa without his signature beard. That’s because it’s been such a major part of the aesthetics of some of his most notable roles, like Khal Drogo and Aquaman.
But those days are gone. Momoa has kissed goodbye to his facial fuzz (for the first time since 2012, he says). And he filmed himself shaving it off.
“Goodbye Drogo, goodbye Arthur Curry, goodbye Declan,” said Momoa as he sheared clumps of hair off his face.
In the video, Momoa says the reason he’s decided to part ways with his beard is because he wants to raise awareness of the destructive impact of plastics on the environment. He goes on to advocate aluminium recycling.
Extinction Rebellion is a London climate change protest, causing traffic disruptions by occupying various public spaces – like Oxford Circus and Waterloo Bridge.
The goal is to see British government declare an ecological emergency and take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025.
North Korea wants United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo replaced with someone “more careful and mature” in talks over its banned nuclear programme, a senior official told state media, hours after the country announced a missile test.
Describing Pompeo as “reckless” the foreign ministry said a summit in Vietnam earlier this year showed that talks could go wrong “whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in”.
The April meeting in Hanoi between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump collapsed after the US president reportedlygave Kim a document demanding that North Korea transfer its nuclear arsenal and weapons fuel to the US.
The model proposed was one that Pompeo and US National Security Adviser John Bolton had supported.
“I am afraid that, if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled,” Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the ministry’s Department of American Affairs said, according to the official KCNA news agency.
“Therefore, even in the case of possible resumption of the dialogue with the US, I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but… (another) person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.”
It is not the first time North Korea has singled out Pompeo for special criticism.
When the top US diplomat met North Korean officials in Pyongyang in July, he was condemned for his “gangster-like” insistence that the North move towards unilateral disarmament.
Kwon said leader Kim had made clear that the US attitude has to change, adding that Pompeo was standing in the way of a resumption of talks.
“We cannot be aware of Pompeo’s ulterior motive behind his self-indulgence in reckless remarks; whether he is indeed unable to understand words properly or just pretending on purpose,” he said.
‘New weapon tested’
Thursday’s attack on Pompeo came hours after KCNA announced Kim had supervised the test-firing of a new “tactical-guided weapon” with a “powerful warhead”.
It also comes after satellite imagery suggested heightened activity at a nuclear test site.
Wednesday’s test was “conducted in various modes of firing at different targets,” KCNA reported, adding that Kim described its development as one “of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army”.
The report gave no details of the weapon.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US state department official, told Al Jazeera that it was a “tactical weapon and not a missile”.
“North Korea is maybe exaggerating a bit in order to get America’s attention and that’s what it is all about,” said Fitzpatrick.
“Kim would like to make Trump think again about a deal that might be in the interest of both countries [following the failed Vietnam summit].”
Earlier in the week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US monitor, said activity had been detected at Yongbyon, the North’s main nuclear testing facility.
The think-tank said evidence suggested Pyongyang may be reprocessing radioactive material into bomb fuel.
Kim’s Hanoi summit with Trump, the second between the two men, ended abruptly, with North Korea later protesting that the US was being unreasonable.
Since then, North Korea has said it is mulling options for its diplomacy with the US, and Kim said last week he was open to talks with Trump only if Washington came with the “proper attitude”.
Nintendo has been eyeing virtual reality for longer than you realize.
You wouldn’t have known it back in Jan. 2018 when the first cardboard gaming kit was announced, but work was happening behind the scenes. It was far enough along even then to make a cameo appearance in that first reveal.
“When we first came up with the concept of Labo, we realized that we can incorporate VR experiences into it,” Labo Director and Software Lead Tsubasa Sakaguchi said through a translator during a recent interview.
“[It] was part of the theme from the earlier stages. As you can see from the release announcement video, the VR Toy-Cons are actually included in that announcement video.”
Sure enough, if you look closely toward the end of the video, the Labo VR Kit cameos are unmistakable. There, at the two-minute mark, you can see brief flashes of the Bird, the Camera, the Wind Pedal, and the Blaster. There’s even a brief, easy-to-miss glimpse at the controller end of the Elephant Toy-Con’s trunk.
This was more than a year before Labo VR Kit was even announced, mind you. But the examples that flash by in the announcement trailer don’t look all that different from their final retail versions, if they differ at all. All that’s missing is the big giveaway: the goggles.
“We made sure to hide the VR googles, so you’ll only see the tip of the Blaster or the other parts of the Toy-Cons,” Sakaguchi said. Still, the idea was there; the work was well underway.
Although he wouldn’t say how long Nintendo has been looking at the modern era of VR, work on the Labo VR Kit grew out of the company’s ongoing tech research efforts. It’s a reminder that Nintendo is keenly aware of the market even if it’s not always engaged in the technological arms race that has defined the so-called “console wars” of the past.
“[W]e do continuous research of new technology, but for Labo, we wanted to create something new and innovative,” Sakaguchi said. He added that the company is always looking for “that tiny little overlap” between the innovative and the familiar — and in many ways, Labo broadly embodies that overlap.
Is it a toy or a game? A construction kit or coding toolbox? You’re folding cardboard to make familiar objects, like a piano or a steering wheel, and then using those creations to interact with the software. But there’s also Toy-Con Garage (and Labo VR Kit’s Toy-Con Garage VR), which lets you rewrite the rules of how any Labo creation works or even make your own.
It’s daunting at first when you jump into a Garage workspace, but the idea is to use it as a creative playspace. “I think as users we tend to focus more on very complex programming,” Sakaguchi said, adding, “but we want everybody to understand you can start off easy and still create a really exciting experience.”
“For Labo, we wanted to create something new and innovative.”
He offers an example: A Nintendo colleague’s 5-year-old daughter went through the whole process of building each Toy-Con and getting the hang of how it all works. Then she came up with a simple fire-making “game” using nothing more than a standard Switch Joy-Con’s motion sensors.
If you place the Joy-Con between two hands and rub them back and forth as if the Joy-Con is a stick, it made the Switch’s screen flash. She then cut out a little fire silhouette that could wrap around the screen, giving the impression that the flashes of light reflected your efforts to start a virtual fire.
“I always think that you can just create something that is very simple and impressive,” Sakaguchi said. And while the fire-making game might not seem instantly impressive to you, the adult reading this interview, it’s the act of creation that matters — and the ability to share it with family and friends.
The same principle applies with Toy-Con Garage VR. This is still a new technology for most people. Creating something and that you can then show off to someone you know taps into the same sense of excitement that kids feel when they show off the architectural wonders they create out of building blocks.
“We think that what is important is to be able to see what you’ve just created come to life,” Sakaguchi said. “As well as to get feedback from your friends and family, just watching them be impressed and surprised at what you created.”
Image: Nintendo
To punctuate that point, Sakaguchi paused our interview briefly to fiddle around in Toy-Con Garage VR. After a couple minutes, he handed me the goggles and the Wind Pedal. Peering through, I saw a little green robot staring back at me. When I pressed the pedal, the robot jumped up high, forcing me to crane my neck upward if I wanted to keep it in my field of view.
Sakaguchi made that right there in front of me. It’s a very simple creation, consisting of just a couple commands. But there’s an undeniable appeal to the idea of fiddling around with this toolbox and coming up with something that simply works.
You don’t need to build some massive, complicated game in Garage to impress the people in your circle. That’s part of the reason why the Labo VR Kit’s goggles have no headstrap — the act of sharing something you’ve just seen or created is so much more instantaneous when you don’t have to fumble around with straps.
“We want everybody to understand you can start off easy and still create a really exciting experience.”
“We focused on local sharing, and that was because we wanted that trial-and-error of looking at your friends or family’s feedback on what you’ve created and then creating something that’s even better,” Sakaguchi said.
There’s another reason there’s no headstrap, as well: comfort. Not everyone takes to such a visually immersive experience in quite the same way. Sakaguchi and his team wanted to be sure that “if the person wanted to just get out of the VR, they could at any given time.”
While it would be nice to see Labo someday evolve to the point that users can share their Garage creations across a wider online community, that hasn’t happened yet. Labo VR Kit will, however, be growing as an experience now that its out.
Sakaguchi didn’t get into the specifics, but he did say that there are expansion plans for VR Plaza, a minigame-packed section of the Labo VR Kit in which all of the experiences were built in Toy-Con Garage VR.
“Although it’s not sharing with your friends, we wanted to share something with our users. So we have an update in the future coming to share new VR Plaza content with the users,” he said. “That’s all I can say for now.”
When you’re an actor, not getting an audition must be tough. But surely getting the audition only to be casually replaced after you’ve already recorded the show must be a lot worse.
Just ask Linda Cardellini. She appeared on The Late Late Show on Wednesday and recounted how that exact scenario happened to her on Family Guy — and she told the story in front of Seth MacFarlane.
“I did a voice on it, and I told everybody, like, ‘tune in and watch’, and then when I watched it I was replaced!” she said.
MacFarlane’s response? “In my defence, I have no recollection of anything past this morning.”
Soldiers and sailors will also qualify for a review if they were recommended for the Medal of Honor but didn’t receive it. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Lawmakers want the Pentagon to take another look at scores of soldiers who may have been denied the nation’s highest military honor due to their race or religion.
Congress is preparing to order the Pentagon to review the records of scores of decorated soldiers who served in World War I to determine if they were denied the nation’s highest battlefield honor because of their race or religion.
The bipartisan World War I Medals Review Act, expected to be unveiled Thursday, marks the latest effort to rectify the military’s history of discrimination against black soldiers and other minorities who fought and died alongside their white comrades but were shunned and often the victims of racial violence.
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“We are in a historical conversation about race,” said Timothy Wescott, director of the George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War at Park University in Missouri, which is already reviewing some of the cases for the nonprofit United States Foundation for the Commemoration of the World Wars. “If there are corrections to make it is time to make those corrections in the bigger picture of reconciliation as a nation.”
The reviews would be the first of their kind for the century-old conflict that pitted Great Britain, France, Russia and eventually the United States against foes including Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The research will initially focus on about 70 African American troops and then turn to other minority groups, according to officials involved in the effort.
The new legislation, shared in advance with POLITICO, calls for the review of cases involving African, Asian, Hispanic, Native and Jewish Americans. The measure is expected to be included later this year in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense policy bill.
Black troops served in segregated units during World War I, which means that “the information for forensic, historical and genealogical research is comparatively easy to locate” compared with the other four minority groups, said Wescott, a retired Marine. “We have been receiving information from other genealogists and family members, particularly in the Hispanic American and Jewish American grouping.”
To warrant a review, the service members must have been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross or the Navy Cross, both considered the nation’s second-highest awards for valor, or the French Croix de Guerre with Palm, France’s highest honor, according to the proposed legislation.
Soldiers and sailors will also qualify for a review if they were recommended for the Medal of Honor but didn’t receive it.
In all these categories, commanders at the time signed notarized statements on their forces’ exploits, ensuring that the reviews rely solely on first-person accounts of the battles. The review process, which researchers estimatecould take between five and seven years, will also compare the records with other cases in which troops were awarded the Medal of Honor.
The House version of the bill is being sponsored by Rep. French Hill, an Arkansas Republican who is enlisting co-sponsors in both parties. Identical Senate legislation is being sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri.
“Servicemembers of all races, religions and backgrounds fought in WWI, but the Medal of Honor was patently denied to minority veterans until the 1990s,” said Van Hollen’s office, which is planning a public roll-out Thursday in Cambridge, Md. The event will include representatives from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.
“We cannot erase the discrimination minority service members faced, but we can make sure their heroic deeds are acknowledged and honored,” added Blunt in a statement.
The legislation urges the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force to work with the Medals Review Task Force, which was established by the World Wars foundation and the George S. Robb Centre.
The Pentagon has conducted similar reviews for minority groups who served in other conflicts stretching from World War II to the war in Afghanistan.
The systematic reviews began in the 1990s for World War II, a conflict in which black units remained segregated. That effort resulted in more than 100 soldiers receiving the Medal of Honor, all but one of them posthumously.
World War I, in which more than 116,000 Americans died, “was never included in any of these systematic projects,” said Zachary Austin, who has also been researching some of the minority medal cases.
He said the conflict stands out for another reason: All the Medals of Honor went to white soldiers. In contrast, Medal of Honor recipients were much more ethnically diverse in preceding conflicts, such as the 1898 Spanish-American War and the Philippine insurrection between 1899 and 1902.
Evidence is strongest that the military leadership during the First World War downplayed the African American soldiers’ battlefield heroics, historians say.
More than 367,000 African American troops served in World War I in 1917 and 1918. Those included soldiers in the 369th “Harlem Hellfighters,“ which completed more combat days and suffered more casualties than any other American regiment, according to the World War One Centennial Commission, which Congress established in 2013 to help commemorate the 100th anniversary of the conflict.
But none received the Medal of Honor. And as a sign of the enduring discrimination against black Americans after the war, an official report by the commandant of the Army War College in 1925 referred to African Americans as a “sub-species of the human family.”
The legislation is needed, advocates say, in part because the rules governing the Medal of Honor say it has to be recommended within three years of a battle and awarded to the recipient within five years. And only Congress can waive that restriction.
The push to reopen the World War I files was originally sparked by the case of ArmySgt. William Butler of Salisbury, Md., a veteran of the 369th.
Butler received the Distinguished Service Cross, according to military records, “for extraordinary heroism in action near Maisons-en-Champagne, France, on Aug. 18, 1918. “Sergeant Butler broke up a German raiding party which had succeeded in entering our trenches and capturing some of our men. With an automatic rifle he killed four of the raiding party and captured or put to flight the remainder of the invaders.”
Some historians believe he should have received the Medal of Honor but didn’t because he was black. “It is the one we know the most about,” Austin said of the Butler case, which is among those that will be reviewed. “It spawned the whole effort.”
Others believe the effort is long overdue.
“It’s honoring them — maybe a little late,” said retired Army Col. Gerald York, who has been advising the World War One Centennial Commission.
York is the grandson of Sgt. Alvin York, one of the highest decorated veterans of World War I, who was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits in the so-called Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October 1918. Gerald York said his grandfather faced discrimination due to his initial claim of being a conscientious objector on religious grounds. Alvin York had originally only been recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross.
York said securing the deserved honors for past victims of discrimination is not just about righting the wrongs of history.
“It’s also telling folks serving today on active duty that they won’t be forgotten,” he said.
Anyone who follows Chrissy Teigen on Twitter will know that she always speaks her mind — and she’s definitely not afraid to hit back at people who attack her.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Fox News host Laura Ingraham found this out first hand.
It started with a clip of Ingraham mocking Chrissy Teigen’s inclusion on Time’s list of the “100 Most Influential People” of 2019.
“She was chosen according to the profile because, quote: ‘…all her life, Chrissy Teigen has liked to eat. She’s not shy about that — or anything else really,’” says Ingraham in the video.
“Well that’s nice and innovative I guess, eating. But did most Americans like her take on female empowerment during last week’s Democrat retreat?”
Ingraham then cuts to a clip of Chrissy Teigen responding to a question about which word she thinks women should use more often by saying “fuck you”.
Well, Teigen wasn’t about to take Ingraham’s scorn lying down. In the early hours of Thursday morning, she fired off a series of tweets going after Ingraham directly.
Corny monster. There were 1 million other ways to try and take me down and this is what you choose? Fuck you. https://t.co/wETBvafAzo
Teigen then shared an infamous GIF of Laura Ingraham at a 2016 Republican National Convention, which sparked a debate about whether or not she was giving a Nazi salute.
No response from Ingraham on Twitter yet, but we can’t imagine she’ll be silent for long…
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called on countries across the Middle East to unite against the United States during an address at an Army Day parade in Tehran.
Speaking at a ceremony on Thursday, Rouhani also urged neighbouring countries to “drive back Zionism”, saying the US and its ally Israel were the root cause of the region’s problems.
He added that Iran’s armed forces were not a threat against any regional country.
“The region’s nations have lived alongside each other for centuries and never had a problem … If there is a problem, it is caused by others,” Rouhani said.
Iran declares US ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ in reprisal
“If we have a problem in the region today, its roots are either with Zionism or America’s arrogance.”
Flanked by top generals, Rouhani told Iran’s neighbours and countries across the region that its armed forces are “never against you or your national interests” but are “standing against the aggressors”.
“Let us stand together, be together and rid the region of the aggressor’s presence,” he added in the speech broadcast live on state television.
During the ceremony, soldiers marched past a podium where Rouhani and top military commanders were standing, while locally designed and produced fighter jets took part for the first time in an air display.
Iran also unveiled missiles, submarines, armoured vehicles, radars and electronic warfare systems. It also showed off its Russian S-300 missile defence system.
‘We seek regional security’
Iranian armed forces were more powerful than ever, said Rouhani, amid rising tensions with the US.
“We seek regional security and stability, countries’ sovereignty and end of terrorism and their activities in this region,” he said.
Iran has two armies, one that operates as a national defensive force, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps created after the 1979 revolution to protect the Islamic Republic against both internal and external adversaries.
Iran marks 40th anniversary of Islamic revolution
The US officially designated the Revolutionary Guards as a foreign “terrorist organisation” on Monday, an unprecedented move that was condemned by Iran and created concerns about reprisal attacks on US forces.
Rouhani called the US move against the guards “abhorrent” and said “Insulting the Revolutionary Guards is an insult to all [Iranian] armed forces, and an insult to Iranian great nation.”
Iran’s army has the biggest ground force in Iran and the Revolutionary Guards are in control of a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles.
Last year, US President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from a multilateral agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, later reimposing sanctions focusing on oil exports and financial transactions.
Parades were cancelled in a few provinces where the armed forces were deployed to help flood-affected people. The flooding, which began on March 19, has killed 76 people, forced more than 220,000 people into emergency shelters, and left aid agencies struggling to cope.
Rouhani said: “I doubt we can find this level of unity between people and armed forces in any other country.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had accused the US of “economic terrorism”, saying its unilateral sanctions were impeding aid efforts to flood-stricken cities.
Iran has received material aid from neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Kuwait as well as from Germany, France and Japan.
The world watched in despair on Monday as fire engulfed one of the western world’s most treasured landmarks, Notre Dame.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, but a disaster like this is not unprecedented. Thanks to climate change, armed conflict, development, and human action, threats to historical places are all too common.
Surprisingly, one of the best ways to prepare for those threats is not just structural re-enforcements or other physical defensive measures, but technology.
On Thursday, Google Arts & Culture is celebrating World Heritage Day by expanding its Open Heritage project, which digitally preserves historical sites online. Open Heritage is an initiative launched last year in partnership with the organization CyArk that puts digital 3D renderings, virtual tours, and other data about historical sites, in an open source Google Arts & Culture portal.
Why create digital models of the real world? In these volatile times — when rising sea levels threaten to sink Venice, civil war results in the destruction of ancient Syrian landmarks and artifacts, and Notre Dame burns — creating detailed 3D renderings and blueprints of historical places can serve as an “insurance policy” for world history.
These are essentially reverse-engineered blueprints that can enable the accurate care, repair, and restoration of intricate and unique places. The renderings can also, in the event of disaster, allow people to digitally explore an amazing landmark as it once was.
“In the case of a catastrophic event, just having some blueprints to work from that are derived from the 3D data can be a really valuable starting point,” John Ristevski, CyArk’s founder, said. “It can also provide a strong sense of place, and the sense of wonder that you might have gotten.”
Documenting the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.
Image: Google
Last April, Google Arts & Culture launched its Open Heritage project with CyArk. CyArk is an organization founded to “capture, archive, and share the world’s cultural heritage.” On Thursday, Google is expanding the initiative by adding 30 more historical sites to the portal (up from 26 last year), both from CyArk and two new partners: Historic Environment Scotland and the digital preservation team of the University of South Florida.
Goole is also announcing the Open Heritage Alliance, which unites leaders in the space to consolidate digital preservation in one place online, Open Heritage 3D.
“Building on our collaboration with CyArk last year in the initial vision of Open Heritage, this year we’re excited to showcase the stories of more heritage locations with more institutions on Google Arts & Culture and make the source 3D data easily accessible,” Chance Coughenour, the program manager at Google Arts & Culture, told Mashable.
“This project offers a way for anyone, anywhere to learn how people around the world are working to digitally document and share our shared global history.”
The scale of these projects is quite impressive.
Image: Google
In 2003, the percentage of threatened world heritage sites reached an all time high at 5 percent. That percentage holds today, as additional threatened sites were added to UNESCO’s endangered list, In its most recent report, UNESCO classified 54 of 1,092 world heritage sites as “in danger.” That imbues the work of digital preservationists with a sense of urgency.
Digital preservation works by layering extremely high resolution photos on top of 3D scans captured by a laser measurement system called LIDAR. Using a LIDAR sensor enables preservationists to construct a 3D rendering that is accurate down to the millimeter.
The LIDAR scans and renderings of already impacted sites will now be included in the Open Heritage portal.
The Mexico City Cathedral was damaged in a 2017 earthquake. A LIDAR scan and hi-res photo enables this composite 3D model.
Image: google
After a 2017 earthquake damaged the Mexico City Cathedral & Palace of Fine Arts, it asked CyArk to come in and document the site in case of a future disaster. CyArk flew a drone inside the cathedral to capture the nooks, crannies, and intricate artistry of a historical structure that’s already seen damage, and that the government wants to protect.
“We have these relationships with different governments around the world, and we listen for them to tell us where they need help,” Ristevski said.
CyArk has given the data it captured to the Mexican government, but it also lives in the Open Heritage Portal for everyone to explore.
In the United States, the National Parks Service is concerned about a mysterious biofilm that’s increasingly covering the dome of the Jefferson Monument. It asked CyArk to document the spread of the substance so they could even just get a clear picture of what they’re dealing with.
CyArk would usually use a drone for this kind of work, but National Mall flight restrictions required that they borrow the NPS’ helicopter to cruise around the monument and take ultra high resolution photos and scans from the sky.
One of Google’s new partners, the University of South Florida (USF), is working to digitally preserve the Apollo 1 Memorial at Cape Canaveral. Dr. Lori Collins, the co-director of the Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies at USF, and her team, are spatially documenting many early NASA missions at Cape Canaveral, now under threat from erosion and natural disaster.
“We’re having a lot of issues with climate change, coastal storm impacts, hurricane damage, and they’re threatened from all of that,” Dr. Lori Collins, co-director of the Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies at USF, said. “This is history in our backyard that has great significance to the nation, and is in our recent past, yet it is facing a lot of the same problems that heritage is facing globally.”
The Apollo 1 launchpad is threatened by erosion and climate change. A LIDAR scan will digitally preserve it.
Image: Google
According to Ristevski, another organization captured scans of Notre Dame in 2010. Ristevski says those scans will likely play a part in its restoration. But documenting the damage as it is now will also probably come into play.
“You can imagine now, from the scans that they took of Notre Dame, now they might be able to use that as a guide book on how to reconstruct it,” Ristevski said.
Another problem the Open Heritage Alliance aims to solve is the consolidation of all of this data. CyArk and USF are not the only organizations capturing this data. But right now, there is no central hub for digital preservation, so it may be difficult to locate archives in the event of an emergency. Open Heritage 3D would solve that problem by serving as a repository for the world’s 3D historical data.
“Part of our mission deals with making sure that data and information is readily accessible and is preserved in such a way that the content is discoverable, and able to be dealt with in ways that will persist through time,” Collins said. “Having this open heritage platform, and all of the google tools, just makes it much more broadly approachable and accessible.”
Further, part of CyArk’s mission is training others to use DSLR and LIDAR equipment to capture their own records. Some of the new site data comes from historical sites in Damascus, Syria. CyArk trained young professionals with the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Lebanon to document their heritage, as the war in Syria has affected and damaged many sacred and historical sites across the country. It is CyArk’s hope that many more individuals will be able to capture and upload the data to one central database.
All of the data on the Open Heritage site is open source. Google, CyArk, and USF hope that researchers will continue to plumb their work to create new educational experiences, like VR, and learn more about the historical sites.
Aside from use of the data by governments and historical societies, the Open Heritage project has a role to play for the public. On the Open Heritage portal, users can find multimedia digital tours of far flung ancient temples and or cliffside caves. Of course, even with advances in VR, digitally exploring a site is no substitution for the real thing. But with the volatility of the physical world, as Notre Dame showed this week, the digital one can offer not just a safety net, but a glimpse into history, too.
The Late Show host is not just talking about the embassy accusing Assange of spying on other countries from the building, and hacking the phone of President Lenin Moreno, either.
“What the hell was Assange thinking?” said Colbert. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, especially if it might feed you lobster in bed. But I’ll say this: when you’re in bed, it’s much better to have lobster than crabs.”
Daily Trends Hunter 