Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Parrot Uses Alexa to Order Watermelon, Lightbulbs While Owner Is Out
December 15th, 2018Via: Newsweek: A peckish parrot has been caught ordering strawberries, a watermelon and even a water boiler through his foster owner’s electronic personal assistant. Rocco, an African Grey, requested the items through an Alexa device while his minder was out of the home. Luckily, due to a parental lock, none of his attempted purchases went […]
Affect Recognition: Face Scanning Combined with Insane Pseudoscience
December 14th, 2018You’ll love this one. Via: The Intercept: Facial recognition has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers at New York University’s AI Now Institute […]
Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Doorbell Cameras
December 14th, 2018Via: ACLU: Recently, a patent application from Amazon became public that would pair face surveillance — like Rekognition, the product that the company is aggressively marketing to police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with Ring, a doorbell camera company that Amazon bought earlier this year. While the details are sketchy, the application describes a […]
Virgin Galactic Test Flight Reaches Edge of Space for First Time
December 13th, 2018Via: CBS: Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo carried two test pilots out of the discernible atmosphere Thursday, the company’s first piloted flight to the edge of space and a major milestone for Richard Branson’s plans to eventually launch tourists on brief, sub-orbital trips to space. It was the fourth non-government, purely commercial flight to carry pilots […]
Record for High-Temperature Superconductivity
December 12th, 2018Room temperature superconductors belong in the same basket as fusion power plants artificial general intelligence: They were only a couple of decades away when we read about them in Omni magazine in the 1980s. Via: MIT Technology Review: Chemists found a material that can display superconducting behavior at a temperature warmer than it currently is […]
Walmart Testing Robotic Fry Cook
December 11th, 2018Via: Yahoo Finance: Walmart (WMT) is in the early stages of testing a kitchen robot assistant named “Flippy” at its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters to see whether or not it’s the right fit for its in-store delis. Flippy is the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant powered by artificial intelligence from Miso Robotics, a two-year-old startup. […]
The DIY Rocketeer Building SpaceX Replicas of Self-Landing Rockets
December 8th, 2018bps.space bps.space YouTube Channel Via: Motherboard: Joe Barnard left his background in videography and music production to launch his life of amateur rocketry, and he shares his DIY adventures in building rockets on his YouTube channel BPS.space.
DeepMind’s AlphaZero Obliterates Previous AI Chess Champion
December 6th, 2018Via: Telegraph: DeepMind’s artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero is now showing signs of human-like intuition and creativity, in what developers have hailed as ‘turning point’ in history. The computer system amazed the world last year when it mastered the game of chess from scratch within just four hours, despite not being programmed how to win. But […]
Australia Passes Cyber Snooping Laws with Global Implications
December 6th, 2018Via: AFP: Australia Thursday passed controversial laws allowing spies and police to snoop on the encrypted communications of suspected terrorists and criminals, as experts warned the “unprecedented powers” had far-reaching implications for global cybersecurity. There has been extensive debate about the laws and their reach beyond Australia’s shores in what is seen as the latest […]
5G + AI
December 6th, 2018Via: EE Times: SAN FRANCISCO — Qualcomm launched a $100 million venture fund at an event here where the level of enthusiasm for machine learning ran high. China’s SenseTime alone talked about taking in $3 billion for its platform, and others gave examples of AI quadrupling productivity and saving lives. The combination of 5G and […]
