Artificial intelligence passes the Turing test of penmanship
The learning gap between humans and machines is closing.
Sanskrit, Tibetan, Gujarati, and Glagolitic were among 50 handwritten languages researchers used to test a computer program that proved to be as good, or better, than humans at recognizing the figures – a cognitive step for machines, and a leap forward for the potential that coders could build more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the future.
The program, developed by three researchers whose findings were published last week in Science, can recognize handwritten drawings after only viewing the figures a few times and also passed a basic Turing test.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1213/Artificial-intelligence-passes-the-Turing-test-of-penmanship
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks, I choked on my water! 
LOL
Backslash: Anti-surveillance gadgets for protesters
Two designers create a toolkit for tech-savvy protesters.
by Joshua Kopstein - Dec 11, 2015 2:00 pm UTC
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As an example, the duo demonstrates another item from the kit: a black-and-white bandanna printed with a blocky, digital pattern reminiscent of the common Arabic keffiyeh. Oliveira folds the bandanna and then hands me his iPhone. When I aim the phone's camera at the patterned cloth, a message appears instantly on the screen. When the cloth is folded a different way, another message appears.
Oliveira explains that unlike the ubiquitous QR Code, these patterns don't contain the messages themselves. Instead, each pattern is a hash—a number used to reference data stored elsewhere. When the pattern is scanned, the Backslash app looks up the value on a locally stored hash table. That way, only those who possess the hash table already can read the bandanna's hidden messages
<snip>
Imagine pointing your smart phone at a jogger and the digital pattern on their outfit makes them look like a velociraptor.
