This month we have a fascinating topic bringing the physical and AI together coupled with a redux of our first year of the Redactecon security conference held in Grand Junction last month.
Machine Learning and X-Rays: how to read 2000 year old charcoal (Ryan Fleming)
In 79 AD, Mt. Vesuvius buried a library of Epicurean philosophy under superheated pyroclastic flows at Herculaneum. The carbonized scrolls, discovered in 1752, have resisted every attempt to open them without destroying them. In 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge offered prizes for anyone who could read them, releasing terabytes of synchrotron X-ray scans to the public. The 2023 Grand Prize was awarded for recovering passages from one scroll, but hundreds more remain unread. This talk covers the three core problems the challenge broke the work into: segmentation (tracing the papyrus surface through the tightly wound spiral), virtual unwrapping (flattening those surfaces into readable sheets), and ink detection (using machine learning to find carbon ink that is nearly invisible to X-rays).
Redux re: Redactecon (thx for the idea Aubrey!)
50 folks! 50 <- not a typo. A soldering station for unique badges and a wicked cool classic computer display with working systems! Yep, it was already a success before the first talk.
And then there was the first talk, then the second and I am left SMH. Quality of content rivaling the best conferences I've attended.
This session will be structured sharing. You will be asked to share your experience or ask a question of those who were there to facilitate the maximum benefit to the community of Patterson and Co's efforts. I'll reserve the right to run it as open spaces if there are too many folks now that many of us are used to the format.
Agenda
6:00pm - 6:15pm Who's hiring & who's looking
6:15pm - 7:00pm-ish Scrolls, charcoal, ML & Xrays - Ryan Fleming
7:05pm - 8:00pm-ish - Redux Re: Redactecon
