reconstruction
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FDA says unapproved 'designer vagina' treatments are dangerous
Cellulite, thigh gaps, hip dips... women have no end of supposed physical "flaws" to worry about, and in recent times this remit has expanded to include the state of their vaginas, too. The internet is awash with products designed to improve a woman's "intimate health", but now the FDA has found that these treatments and procedures -- which claim to tighten muscles, increase lubrication, boost sexual pleasure or just "neaten things up" -- are not only unapproved, but are causing serious injuries to the women undertaking them.
Disney researchers can now digitally shave your face, clone it for animatronics (video)
The minds at Disney Research aren't only interested in tracking your face -- they want to map, shave and clone it, too. Through a pair of research projects, Walt's proteges have managed to create systems for not only mapping, digitally reconstructing and removing facial hair, but also for creating lifelike synthetic replicas of human faces for use in animatronics. Let's start with the beards, shall we? Facial hair is a big part of a person's physical identity, a quick shave can render a close friend unrecognizable -- but modern face-capture systems aren't really optimized for the stuff. Disney researchers attempted to address that issue by creating an algorithm that detects facial hair, reconstructs it in 3D and uses the information it gathers to suss out the shape of the skin underneath it. This produces a reconstruction of not only the skin episurface, but also of the subject's individual hairs, meaning the final product can be viewed with or without a clean shave. Another Disney team is also taking a careful look at the human face, but is working on more tangible reconstructions -- specifically for use on audio-animatronic robots. The team behind the Physical Face Cloning project hope to automate part of creating animatronics to speed up the task of replicating a human face for future Disney robots. This complicated process involves capturing a subjects face under a variety of conditions and using that data to optimize a composition of synthetic skin to best match the original. Fully bearded animatronic clones are still a ways off, of course, but isn't it comforting to know that Disney could one day replace you accurately replicate your visage in Walt Disney World for posterity? Dive into the specifics of the research at the source links below, or read on for a video summary of the basics.
YouPlayorWePay under "reconstruction"
This could be the end of the strange story of YouPlayorWePay.com -- or a new beginning. We posted about the site when it first appeared, and even interviewed the founders, but apparently they've decided to make some major adjustments to the site, as it's now down for "reconstruction." A forum post by George Tung says that they are not only redesigning the site, but "re-doing our whole concept." One of our tipsters suggests that Blizzard legal may have gotten involved, but that seems unlikely -- Tung also posts that "when we are done, there will not be any more concerns about our service not being worth or if what we are doing is legal."So there you have it. We'll have to see what they've got in store for us (though, of course, there's a chance the site may not return at all). Lots of people have had questions and concerns about the concept behind this site from the beginning, and we remain curious to see how this "reconstruction" will answer them.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Rooster Teeth reveals new series: Reconstruction
If you've kept up with the five seasons (and multiple spin-off miniseries) of Rooster Teeth's (mostly) comedic Halo-based series "Red vs. Blue", then their recent announcement (with accompanying teaser trailer) of a brand new chapter in their seminal machinima franchise should definitely tickle your fancy. However, it seems that the Teeth have left their lollerskates at home for this one -- though the cast list tacked to the end of the above video shows that many of the series' voice actors are making a return, the trailer lacks the Spanish-speaking robots, megalomaniacal medics, and pregnant men that we've become accustomed to seeing in the "RvB" universe. Still, with production values like this, we couldn't be more on board.
Alphas glean some TR patch 1.7 details
If ever we wondered whether the Tabula Rasa dev team employed a staggered development schedule (and we have), I think we can finally put that question to rest. No sooner do we get our hands on the patch notes for patch 1.6 then we find out that many of the changes for patch 1.7 are already sketched out. The Alphas over at Tabula Rasa Vault recently took a number of community concerns to the developers and published the findings in a Q&A format. Much to our surprise, these include several things that are scheduled to be included in patch 1.7. We're all about aggressive content development schedules, but we're hoping they remember what happened the last time they pushed a patch out the door without letting it simmer in test for long enough.In any case, some of the fixes coming in patch 1.7 include a fix to Controlled Fission in PvP, some tweaks to the UI to encourage more player interaction, a nerf to some high level abuse of the Medic's Reconstruction ability, and the addition of repair tools (which are now affected by item rarity) to the loot drop tables. One last juicy detail was the development team is currently working on overhauling the ailing crafting system, but the timetable for release is slotted for a nebulous "future patch."
