Facepalm Newsoids 43: Seeing The Holy See

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Seeing The Holy See with your mind.

Basilica made by St. Peter/Holy presence by Microsoft AI. According to Reuters News, The Vatican has issued AI-enabled services so that anyone on the Internet can view their Renaissance architecture in time for the 2025 celebration of the Holy Year Jubilee held every 25 years. The virtual reality-driven website was helped along by over 400,000 photos taken by drones flying over the Basilica at night over the past month. The Vatican has worked with Iconem, a firm which deals in the digitalization of historical sites, and with Microsoft, which has provided AI and web services to make the site possible. Finally, seeing the Holy See can be done from the comfort of your own computer or device. (11 Nov)

The Baguette Bandit of Paris. More food robbers in the news: this time,  hackers stole 45GB of data from a Paris electric company, and demanded a ransom of $125,000 in baguettes. The hackers were willing, however to cut the ransom in half if they publically admitted the breach. (5 Nov)

News which sounds like an Onion parody.  The website InfoWars, a conspiracy theory-driven website and news channel once headed by “entertainer” Alex Jones was auctioned off to the satirical news website The Onion, with the help of some of the families of the victims of Sandy Hook. (15 Nov)

The finer points of the law. In India, a hitman named Neeraj Sharma went to jail for killing a lawyer going by the name of Anjali. He went to jail and was released on bail. But Neeraj had legal grievances of his own. He went back to the police precinct in Uttar Pradesh to complain that he was hired by members of Anjali’s immediate family to kill him, and Neeraj’s going to jail for the crime was part of the deal, and that he would receive a payment of 2 million rupees, or about $30,000 CAD for his contract, which he never received. He demanded the police go after the family regarding this egregious breach of contract. (8 Nov)

The finer points of rescuing people. A 71 year-old Oregonian cyclist named William Hoesch who was struck by an ambulance making a right turn into him and later scooped him up and sent him to hospital, had been billed $1,862 for the ride. Hoesch has now filed a $997,000 lawsuit against Columbia River Fire & Rescue, the ambulance company that delivered him to hospital and billed him for the service. The ambulance company was not available for comment. (14 Nov)

Witchcraft for the kids. Mattel had to pull its line of dolls based on the new movie called Wicked, because the website marked on the packaging led to a porn site, and issued a full apology, telling parents who have already purchsed the doll for their kids to discard the product packaging or obscure the web link marked on the packaging. (10 Nov)

(The Onion) Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport