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A boxed aluminum frame, round headlights, three-spoke wheels and and bold graphics; nothing epitomizes the dawn of the 90s like the 1990 Suzuki GSX-R750. The 115 hp Slingshot was the first GSX-R with upside down forks, and the last one to put its twin lights on full display. It demands attention, even today—so if you’re going to customize one, you’d better make it unmissable.

That’s Michel Szozda’s theory, at least. He customizes motorcycles as Cool Kid Customs, working out of a space that he shares with other creative friends in Haarlem, near Amsterdam. His style is anything but conventional, and his bikes are typically wrapped in eye-popping liveries.

This project ended up in the Cool Kid workshop almost by accident. Michel’s client had booked in his Yamaha Ténéré for a makeover, and had picked up the GSX-R to act as a daily runner while the Yamaha was being worked on. But once Michel saw the Suzuki, he suggested that it’d be a better option for a custom build.

The client agreed, and the ‘Rad Racer’ project was underway. But Michel had more work ahead of him than he’d expected. “The Suzuki looked clean when he came to drop the bike off,” he tells us, “but on further inspection, it had damage on almost every part.”

Custom Suzuki GSX-R750 Slingshot by Cool KidRead More

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By: Wesley Reyneke
Title: Cool as ice: A GSX-R750 Slingshot from the Netherlands
Sourced From: www.bikeexif.com/custom-gsx-r750-slingshot
Published Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2023 17:01:58 +0000

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What if we could just ask AI to be less biased?

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7 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

Think of a teacher. Close your eyes. What does that person look like? If you ask Stable Diffusion or DALL-E 2, two of the most popular AI image generators, it’s a white man with glasses. 

Last week, I published a story about new tools developed by researchers at AI startup Hugging Face and the University of Leipzig that let people see for themselves what kinds of inherent biases AI models have about different genders and ethnicities.

Although I’ve written a lot about how our biases are reflected in AI models, it still felt jarring to see exactly how pale, male, and stale the humans of AI are. That was particularly true for DALL-E 2, which generates white men 97% of the time when given prompts like “CEO” or “director.”

And the bias problem runs even deeper than you might think into the broader world created by AI. These models are built by American companies and trained on North American data, and thus when they’re asked to generate even mundane everyday items, from doors to houses, they create objects that look American, Federico Bianchi, a researcher at Stanford University, tells me.

As the world becomes increasingly filled with AI-generated imagery, we are going to mostly see images that reflect America’s biases, culture, and values. Who knew AI could end up being a major instrument of American soft power?
So how do we address these problems? A lot of work has gone into fixing biases in the data sets AI models are trained on. But two recent research papers propose interesting new approaches.

What if, instead of making the training data less biased, you could simply ask the model to give you less biased answers?

A team of researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and AI startup Hugging Face developed a tool called Fair Diffusion that makes it easier to tweak AI models to generate the types of images you want. For example, you can generate stock photos of CEOs in different settings and then use Fair Diffusion to swap out the white men in the images for women or people of different ethnicities.

As the Hugging Face tools show, AI models that generate images on the basis of image-text pairs in their training data default to very strong biases about professions, gender, and ethnicity. The German researchers’ Fair Diffusion tool is based on a technique they developed called semantic guidance, which allows users to guide how the AI system generates images of people and edit the results.

The AI system stays very close to the original image, says Kristian Kersting, a computer science professor at TU Darmstadt who participated in the work. 

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This method lets people create the images they want without having to undertake the cumbersome and time-consuming task of trying to improve the biased data set that was used to train the AI model, says Felix Friedrich, a PhD student at TU Darmstadt who worked on the tool.

However, the tool is not perfect. Changing the images for some occupations, such as “dishwasher,” didn’t work as well because the word means both a machine and a job. The tool also only works with two genders. And ultimately, the diversity of the people the model can generate is still limited by the images in the AI system’s training set. Still, while more research is needed, this tool could be an important step in mitigating biases.

A similar technique also seems to work for language models. Research from the AI lab Anthropic shows how simple instructions can steer large language models to produce less toxic content, as my colleague Niall Firth reported recently. The Anthropic team tested different language models of varying sizes and found that if the models are large enough, they self-correct for some biases after simply being asked to.

Researchers don’t know why text- and image-generating AI models do this. The Anthropic team thinks it might be because larger models have larger training data sets, which include lots of examples of biased or stereotypical behavior—but also examples of people pushing back against this biased behavior.

AI tools are becoming increasingly popular for generating stock images. Tools like Fair Diffusion could be useful for companies that want their promotional pictures to reflect society’s diversity,

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By: Melissa Heikkilä
Title: What if we could just ask AI to be less biased?
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/28/1070390/what-if-we-could-just-ask-ai-to-be-less-biased/
Published Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:22:40 +0000

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 Size? and Adidas Enter Into Partnership With Amnesia Ibiza

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9 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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Screen Shot 2023 06 03 at 8.43.52 AM 1024x606 1

The world-renowned super club Amnesia has teamed up with the peerless footwear specialists size? and globally recognized Adidas Originals for the 2023 season. This partnership aims to bring together two cultural powerhouses to create unforgettable experiences for club-goers.

As part of this partnership, size? and adidas Originals will sponsor some of the biggest events at Amnesia, including the Pyramid opening on June 11th and the closing party. Pyramid parties will feature headliners such as Caribou, Bonobo (DJ Set), Ricardo Villabolos, Nina Kraviz, Raresh, Richie Hawin, and more. They will also sponsor the all-inclusive party HE.SHE.THEY. with several exciting activations throughout the season.

For each of these special collaborative events, size? and adidas Originals will take things to a whole new level with unique video mapping on the Amnesia entrance wall, special bus wraps, and plenty more across the season.

Do Not Sleep

The partnership will commence with the Do Not Sleep event on June 7th, featuring Jackmaster and Sidney Charles b2b Yaya, Manchester’s favorite trio, Mason Collective.

Tickets: €35 +

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Pyramid Opening

The Pyramid opening on June 11th will feature a special three-way back-to-back between Ricard Villalobos, Raresh, and Franco Cinelli on the Terraza, alongside Nima Gorji and Cuartero. The Main Room will welcome Andres Campo, Deborah De Luca, Kobosil, and Luca Donzelli.

Tickets: €55 +

Screen Shot 2023 06 03 at 8.42.31 AM 1024x603 1

The partnership between size? and adidas Originals with Amnesia Ibiza is truly a coming together of some mighty forces in the worlds of music and fashion. We can expect the 2023 season to be a season of unforgettable experiences.

Size? shared their excitement about the partnership, saying “With the summer season upon us, we’re excited to announce our partnership with iconic super club Amnesia for the full season in Ibiza. Here at size?, we are incredibly passionate about music, and we’ll also be sponsoring some of the most renowned nights on the Balearic island; Pyramid, Do Not Sleep, Amnesia Present, and HE/SHE/THEY. We can’t wait to see what the season has to offer.”

Neil Evans, Music Director at Amnesia Ibiza, also expressed his excitement about the partnership, saying “It’s a real pleasure to be working alongside two forward-thinking brands. We have been looking for a perfect brand alignment for some time, and we have a like-minded partnership for the future.”

The post  Size? and Adidas Enter Into Partnership With Amnesia Ibiza appeared first on EDMTunes.

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By: Oscar Yerushalmi
Title:  Size? and Adidas Enter Into Partnership With Amnesia Ibiza
Sourced From: www.edmtunes.com/2023/06/size-and-adidas-enter-into-partnership-with-amnesia-ibiza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=size-and-adidas-enter-into-partnership-with-amnesia-ibiza
Published Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:08:21 +0000

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The Best Backpacking Gear for the John Muir Trail

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9 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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By Michael Lanza

So you’re planning to thru-hike the John Muir Trail and making all of the necessary preparations, and now you’re wondering: What’s the best gear for a JMT hike? Having thru-hiked the JMT as well as taken numerous other backpacking trips all over the High Sierra—mostly between late August and late September, which I consider that the best time to walk the Sierra, to avoid snow and the voracious mosquitoes and blazing hot afternoons of mid-summer—I offer the following picks for the best lightweight backpacking gear and apparel for a JMT thru-hike.

Indisputably one of the best backpacking trips in America—and among the very best I’ve taken over three decades of backpacking, including 10 years I spent as Northwest Editor and lead gear reviewer for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog—the JMT meanders for 211 miles through the magnificent High Sierra, from Yosemite Valley to the summit of the highest peak in the Lower 48, 14,505-foot Mount Whitney (where backpackers must then descend another 11 miles to finish the trip at Whitney Portal trailhead). See my story about thru-hiking the JMT in seven days.

With few opportunities to resupply along the trail—and given the generally dry weather in the Sierra in summer—you can easily and should hike the JMT with the lightest gear that works for you (or that you can afford). Maximum pack weight will depend on how many days you spend on the trail and your food weight, but it’s quite feasible to keep your base pack weight (everything but food and water) within 15 pounds or less—and certainly no more than 20 pounds—without compromising safety or comfort in camp.

Wind4 016 3
Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-guides to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

A backpacker hiking the John Muir Trail above Helen Lake in Kings Canyon N.P., High Sierra.
” data-image-caption=”Marco Garofalo backpacking the John Muir Trail above Helen Lake in Kings Canyon N.P. Click photo to learn how I can help you plan your JMT thru-hike.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/JMT2-085-Marco-Garofalo-hiking-above-Helen-Lake-John-Muir-Trail-Kings-Canyon-N.P.-High-Sierra..jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/JMT2-085-Marco-Garofalo-hiking-above-Helen-Lake-John-Muir-Trail-Kings-Canyon-N.P.-High-Sierra..jpg?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”900″ height=”600″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/JMT2-085-Marco-Garofalo-hiking-above-Helen-Lake-John-Muir-Trail-Kings-Canyon-N.P.-High-Sierra..jpg?resize=900%2C600&ssl=1″ alt=”A backpacker hiking the John Muir Trail above Helen Lake in Kings Canyon N.P., High Sierra.” class=”wp-image-54840″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/JMT2-085-Marco-Garofalo-hiking-above-Helen-Lake-John-Muir-Trail-Kings-Canyon-N.P.-High-Sierra..jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/JMT2-085-Marco-Garofalo-hiking-above-Helen-Lake-John-Muir-Trail-Kings-Canyon-N.P.-High-Sierra..jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside
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