IBM and David Clark Cause just announced Saaf Water as this year’s 2021 grand prize winner!

Saaf Water is the first team from India to take the grand prize and their amazing story represents everything that’s good and necessary about the Call for Code challenge.

Per an IBM press release:

This year’s winners join a prestigious lineup of past victors including Project Owl and Promoteo , and Agrolly , whose winning solutions have gone on to inspire future participants and help mitigate the impact of natural disasters, climate change, and other challenges through a combination of open-source and community-driven corporate support.

The Call for Code challenge is an opportunity to be the change you wish to see, only instead of going at it alone, you get the support of the Linux Foundation, David Clarke Cause, and IBM‘s technology experts.

In the case of Saaf Water, a team of young people organized a multimodal technology solution to a problem that’s literally plagued humanity since the inception of civilization. They want to make sure we know whether our water is safe to drink or not.

This is a problem that affects communities of every stripe around the globe. And, for the members of the Saaf Water team, this was a problem that was personal.

Per IBM:

Saaf Water’s solution is equal parts innovation and education. They developed an interface that handles at-source testing and community notifications. In essence, the team has democratized access to information about water quality in a way that can both help local agents ensure quality and inform the community at-large when they’re at risk.

TNW spoke with the Saaf Water team and, through a pair of representatives, they explained how not only is time precious when contamination sets in, but some water sources experience seasonal contamination. This means a source could go bad in-between test cycles.

Saaf Water’s solution will almost certainly save lives. And the team credits the challenge itself for inspiring them. Many of the group’s members worked with an IBM internship program during their high school years and, after being inspired by the work done by Project Owl, they decided to enter the competition themselves.

We’re overjoyed to extend our heartiest congratulations to Saaf Water. Not only are they joining a prestigious group of past winners, but they’ve clearly demonstrated how valuable the Call for Code challenge truly is.

Trump’s censorship czar for TRUTH social media once sued a cow over Twitter beef

Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump’s TRUTH network, a former California politician who once sued an imaginary cow over a Twitter beef, recently declared that the upcoming conservative conversation chamber would be “the most family-friendly of all social media sites.”

In order to accomplish this, Nunes says the company’s hired the same artificial intelligence moderation firm as OnlyFans.

Yes MAGA fans, Trump’s TRUTH will be censored using the same technology as every other social media site.

Oh the irony: Hive, the AI firm in question, serves numerous high-profile clients including Reddit, Parler, and the aforementioned OnlyFans. And, according to its own website , it’s very good at censoring posts that break its clients’ terms of service.

Per a report from Fox Business:

Playing devil’s advocate: Banning sexually-explicit content and posts that include violence we understand. But who gets to decide what is and isn’t bullying, hate-speech, or spam?

Choosing Devin Nunes to both run the company as CEO and rule over its content with an iron fist as censorship czar seems like a bold choice. The entire premise of “TRUTH,” is built around free speech and the free exchange of ideas unfettered by censorship.

Nunes is well-known in conservative circles as being a die-hard Trump ally. But he’s perhaps best known for being the guy who spent years trying to sue an imaginary cow and a parody of his mom on Twitter.

In a $250 million lawsuit, the California conservative claimed the parody accounts had defamed him.

Per a report from the Washington Post:

He seems fun: Between the AI-powered censorship (which is demonstrably more prone to bias and negative outcomes than human moderators) and Nunes’ apparent belief that mocking him should carry a $250 million penalty, it’s going to be hilarious watching TRUTH’s content moderation strategy play out.

Unfortunately for right wingers who believe ‘Free Speech’ somehow means a private company is forced to host their rhetoric, the dream of uncensored social media remains unrealized and it doesn’t appear as though Trump’s latest grift effort will change that.

One need look no further than its closest cousin, GETTR, which was founded by ardent Trump sycophant Jason Miller.

GETTR became the belle of the conservative ball when podcaster and horse dewormer advocate Joe Rogan declared it his backup plan in case Twitter banned him.

But that love affair lasted less than a month before Rogan got hip to the fact that GETTR was funded with Chinese money and adding Twitter user counts to fudge follower numbers.

In a recent interview for The Tim Dillon Show, Rogan called the practices “fuckery” and stated that he “didn’t know how to get off” the platform.

On the bright side for MAGA fans, GETTR still has Marjorie Taylor Greene. And, in all fairness, Trump’s TRUTH network also used a Chinese firm to organize its funding .

Lol don’t worry MAGA die-hards, Twitter will still be there when you inevitably decide to come back.

‘Hear’ this Kandinsky painting with Google’s psychedelic AI tool

Google has launched a new AI tool that lets you listen to the sounds that Vassily Kandinsky may have heard as he painted.

The experiment explores the artist’s synesthesia, a neurological condition that causes one sense to trigger another.

In Kandinsky’s case, he’d see colors and shapes when he heard music, and hear music when he painted.

The abstract art pioneer tried to evoke the sensation through his artworks and writings:

Google’s collaboration with Paris’ Centre Pompidou imagines the sounds he heard in 1925 as he painted “Yellow, Red, Blue,” a striking display of geometric art.

The Google Arts & Culture team describes the lithograph as a small instrumental work:

The researchers first trained Google’s Transformer neural network on music from Kandinsky’s time. They then used the system to generate new scores inspired by the sounds.

Sound artist Antoine Bertine, who worked on the project, said the initial idea was to use machine learning as an archeological tool:

The experiment resulted in Play a Kandinsky , an interactive tool that lets you explore Kandinsky’s synesthesia and generate your own musical compositions based on his work.

You can hear the sounds he associated with different colors and shapes, or listen to the entire masterpiece as the artist may have heard it.

But the best part lets you become the composer of the painting, by clicking on colored shapes to produce the music that you see.

In my case, the string ensemble of the red triangle caused an acute sense of restlessness, but I attribute much of that to this interminable lockdown. The feeling subsided slowly when I tapped on the peaceful violins behind the multi-colored plane.

It doesn’t replicate the connections between sights and sounds that a synaesthetic feels, but it’s an intriguing exploration of the connections between music and painting.