More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Two bird figurines carved from ivory found at the site of Hohle Fels Cave, approximately 40,000 years old. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . For decades, the prehistoric Hohle Fels cave in Germany has been a treasure trove for archeologists .

Look Up Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable Back to School Furtastic All Series Funko reveals first'Over the Garden Wall' Pop! figures just in time for fall Christina Buff is a Nashville-based freelance writer for who covers shopping with a splash of entertainment. If you're ever wondering what streaming service you need to watch something (and the cheapest way to sign up for it), she's your girl. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. Your favorite characters are back in Funko Pop! form.

Visual perspective-taking (VPT), the ability to understand the viewpoint of another person, enables individuals to anticipate the actions of other people. For instance, a driver can avoid accidents by assessing what pedestrians see. Humans typically develop this skill in early childhood, but it remains unclear whether the recently emerging Vision Language Models (VLMs) possess such capability. Furthermore, as these models are increasingly deployed in the real world, understanding how they perform nuanced tasks like VPT becomes essential. In this paper, we introduce two manually curated datasets, Isle-Bricks and Isle-Dots for testing VPT skills, and we use it to evaluate 12 commonly used VLMs. Across all models, we observe a significant performance drop when perspective-taking is required. Additionally, we find performance in object detection tasks is poorly correlated with performance on VPT tasks, suggesting that the existing benchmarks might not be sufficient to understand this problem. The code and the dataset will be available at https://sites.google.com/view/perspective-taking

This work stages Foosball as a versatile platform for advancing scientific research, particularly in the realm of robot learning. We present an automated Foosball table along with its corresponding simulated counterpart, showcasing a diverse range of challenges through example tasks within the Foosball environment. Initial findings are shared using a simple baseline approach. Foosball constitutes a versatile learning environment with the potential to yield cutting-edge research in various fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, notably robust learning, while also extending its applicability to industrial robotics and automation setups. To transform our physical Foosball table into a research-friendly system, we augmented it with a 2 degrees of freedom kinematic chain to control the goalkeeper rod as an initial setup with the intention to be extended to the full game as soon as possible. Our experiments reveal that a realistic simulation is essential for mastering complex robotic tasks, yet translating these accomplishments to the real system remains challenging, often accompanied by a performance decline. This emphasizes the critical importance of research in this direction. In this concern, we spotlight the automated Foosball table as an invaluable tool, possessing numerous desirable attributes, to serve as a demanding learning environment for advancing robotics and automation research.

The most paranoid among us already know the checklist to avoid modern audio eavesdropping: Sweep your home or office for bugs. Put your phone in a Faraday bag--or a fridge. Consider even stripping internal microphones from your devices. Now one group of researchers offers a surprising addition to that list: Remove every lightweight, metallic object from the room that's visible from a window. At the Black Hat Asia hacker conference in Singapore in May, researchers from Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev plan to present a new surveillance technique, designed to allow anyone with off-the-shelf equipment to eavesdrop on conversations if they can merely find a line of sight through a window to any of a wide variety of reflective objects in a given room. By pointing an optical sensor attached to a telescope at one of those shiny objects--the researchers tested their technique with everything from an aluminum trash can to a metallic Rubik's cube--they could detect visible vibrations on an object's surface that allowed them to derive sounds and thus listen to speech inside the room.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have a long way to go before they can take over tasks and jobs traditionally performed by people, say scientists who highlighted the severe limitations of deep learning computer networks. Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US conducted various experiments which showed that it is easy to fool the deep learning neural networks. "The machines have severe limitations that we need to understand," said Philip Kellman, a UCLA professor and senior author of the study published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology According to Kellman, machine vision has drawbacks. In the first experiment, researchers showed colour images of animals and objects to one of the best deep learning networks, called VGG-19. However, the images had been altered.

Supporters have expressed enthusiasm for the use of these networks to do many individual tasks, and even jobs, traditionally performed by people. However, results of the five experiments in this study showed that it's easy to fool the networks, and the networks' method of identifying objects using computer vision differs substantially from human vision. "The machines have severe limitations that we need to understand," said Philip Kellman, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and a senior author of the study. Machine vision, he said, has drawbacks. In the first experiment, the psychologists showed one of the best deep learning networks, called VGG-19, color images of animals and objects.

How smart is the form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning computer networks, and how closely do these machines mimic the human brain? They have improved greatly in recent years, but still have a long way to go, a team of UCLA cognitive psychologists reports in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Supporters have expressed enthusiasm for the use of these networks to do many individual tasks, and even jobs, traditionally performed by people. However, results of the five experiments in this study showed that it's easy to fool the networks, and the networks' method of identifying objects using computer vision differs substantially from human vision. "The machines have severe limitations that we need to understand," said Philip Kellman, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and a senior author of the study.

I never once understood the draw of those Amiibo collectible figurines, either in game or out and, honestly, I figured that Starlink: Battle for Atlas would be an even bulkier, nerdier version of that sort of gameplay. I'm really happy that I called that wrong, this game is great. Starlink is a forthcoming adventure space shooter for the PS4, Xbox One and Switch much in the same vein as the classic SNES franchise, Star Fox. You play as a member of a rag-tag interplanetary strike force fighting against a robotic armada bent on stripping the galaxy of vital resources. Unlike Star Fox, however, players will be able to switch out their ships, weapons, and even pilots on the fly, depending on how the battle is going. To do so, players affix both a physical pilot figurine and starfighter model -- replete with customizable wings and weaponry -- to the top of their controller.

The Papers Please movie finished up its paperwork and nabbed a release date, Overwatch had puppies play Capture the Flag, Warcraft III is hosting a tournament, you'll soon (probably) be able to buy Geralt's bathtub figurine, and Final Fantasy XV is doing a Half-Life crossover. Yes, it's certainly been a weird week in video game news. Let's recap February 19 to 23. As far as bang-for-your-buck goes, the new Humble Classics Return Bundle (that's a mouthful) might be the best the company's ever featured. More than the average gets you Shadowrun: Hong Kong, Age of Wonders III, Xenonauts, and our 2014 Game of the Year Wasteland 2. Pay more than $15 and Humble throws in last year's Torment: Tides of Numenera and Dreamfall Chapters too.