Chevy has created a vehicle that would hurt Dominic Toretto more than a treacherous family member: an all-electric Camaro. Punch ” Tesla drag race vs” into YouTube, and you’re offered a panoply of ways to complete your search. You can watch one of Elon Musk’s electric cars face off with Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Dodge Hellcats, McLarens, Corvettes, and just about any supercar or muscle machine you can think of. These videos are much the same: Again and again, the instant torque of the EV’s motors smokes the gas belcher off the line, leaving nothing but the squeal of the tires […] […]
How Google’s Night Sight Works, and Why It’s So Good
Reading all the gushing praise for Google’s new Night Sight low-light photography feature for Pixel phones, you’d be forgiven for thinking Google had just invented color film. In fact, night shooting modes aren’t new, and many of the underlying technologies go back years. But Google has done an amazing job of combining its prowess in computational imaging with its unparalleled strength in machine learning to push the capability past anything previously seen in a mobile device. We’ll take a look at the history of multi-image capture low-light photography, how it is likely used by Google, and speculate about what […] […]
Google start met bustour in Nederland voor het geven van digitale training
Er zijn inmiddels al meer dan honderdduizend Nederlandse ondernemers en studenten getraind met de Digitale Werkplaats Internet van Google . Dit kan ze helpen bij het vinden van een baan, het kan de inzetbaarheid vergroten op de arbeidsmarkt maar ook een bedrijf laten groeien. Om optimaal deze kansen van het internet te kunnen benutten zijn digitale vaardigheden cruciaal. Daarom heeft Google besloten om vanaf 12 novembermet een bus door heel Nederland te gaan toeren om gratis trainingen en workshops te geven aan ondernemers en studenten. De bus zal in een periode van een jaar iedere provincie aandoen en meer […] […]
ULTIMATE GUIDE TO COPYRIGHT
The ins-and-outs of copyright law may seem daunting for an individual or business to weed through, but the truth is that the basics are actually fairly simple. It’s in the modern era of social media, file sharing and convoluted, mile-long online consent forms where things get a bit complicated and there’s some grey area. In order to get you and your business up to date on the important facts and myths of copyright law—what it does, and doesn’t cover – we’ve created this comprehensive guide. Let’s get right into it. Before we get into specifics about what copyright does […] […]
Slimme speakers verkopen inmiddels als een malle, vooral in China
De slimme speaker wordt niet alleen steeds populairder, er komen er ook steeds meer van. Dat verklaart waarom het aantal verkochte Google Assistants, Alexa’s en vooral Chinese smart speakers bijna verdubbeld is in het afgelopen jaar. Er zijn inmiddels bijna 17 miljoen slimme speakers verkocht, alleen al in het tweede kwartaal van 2018! Marktonderzoek van Canalys heeft uitgewezen dat er wel een verschuiving gaande is op de markt. Waar eerst de globale slimme speaker-markt werd gedomineerd door Amazon met de Echo’s met een marktaandeel van meer dan 80 procent is het nu Google die voorop loopt. De verkopen van […] […]
Met deze technologieën kun je zien of iemand liegt…
Liegen is een onderwerp waar wetenschappers zich al lange tijd mee bezighouden. We doen het allemaal. Een leugentje om bestwil kan je zelfs verder helpen. “Goh, wat heb je leuke schoenen”. Niet gemeend misschien, maar toch handig om een positieve indruk te wekken bij iemand. Bij kinderen is liegen zelfs gezond. Gezond? Ja, omdat dit aangeeft dat ze zich kunnen verplaatsen in wat een ander denkt. Dit heet Theory of Mind. Autistische kinderen vinden het bijvoorbeeld soms moeilijker om te liegen. Onderzoekers willen graag uitpluizen hoe en waarom mensen liegen. Deze kennis kan uiteindelijk nuttig zijn voor politie-onderzoek. In […] […]
Stanford Researchers Build AI Directly Into Camera Optics
Until recently, cameras were exclusively designed to create images for humans — for fun, for art, and for documenting history. With the rapid growth of robots as well as various other kinds of machines and vehicles that need to observe and learn from their environment, many cameras are dedicated to machine vision tasks. Some of the most visible of those, like autonomous vehicles , rely heavily on object recognition, which almost universally means neural networks trained on commonly found objects. One limitation on the deployment of machine vision in many embedded systems, including electric vehicles, is the necessary compute […] […]
Some of the Oldest Galaxies in the Universe Orbit the Milky Way
When the universe was young, there were no stars, galaxies , or even atoms. As space expanded, hydrogen atoms formed and coalesced into stars. Eventually, the first galaxies emerged, and some of those galaxies may still exist. New data from researchers at Durham University in the UK and Harvard in the US suggests several of those ancient galaxies could be in our own backyard . This discovery also lends credence to a leading model of the early universe. Our current understanding holds that the early universe was not even transparent to radiation. It took thousands of years for that […] […]
Before Using Birth Control Apps, Consider Your Privacy
Hotlittlepotato Score one for the quantified self-surveillance movement. Last week, the US Food and Drug Agency approved the first-ever, over-the-counter digital contraceptive—a polished and almost preternaturally upbeat mobile app called Natural Cycles . Basal body temperature readings and monthly menstruation data feed into an algorithm that tells users whether or not they should be having unprotected sex. Like most forms of birth control, it’s not foolproof ; the app has been dogged by reports of unwanted pregnancies that prompted two ongoing investigations by European authorities into its Swedish maker’s marketing claims. But that hasn’t hurt Natural Cycles’ popularity. The […] […]
This Browser Extension Is Like an Anti-Virus for Fake Photos
Casey Chin and HOTLITTLEPOTATO When Michael Bennett played for the Seattle Seahawks, he celebrated wins with a victory dance in the team locker room. He did not celebrate them by burning the American flag, contrary to a viral Photoshopped picture that began making the rounds online in September of 2017. If you’d read the fact-checks on sites like Snopes.com , Time , and yep, even WIRED , you would have known that the photo of Bennett burning a flag, his teammates and coach looking on joyfully, was fake. But if you happened to encounter the fake photo on Facebook, […] […]
Welcome to Checkout-Free Retail. Don’t Mind All the Cameras
Hotlittlepotato The shop has no sign. Or rather, the sign is obscured by some kind of bunting. The glass doors are papered over. You gotta know what’s back there, like a speakeasy. Venturing to open the door, I find I still can’t get inside. Between me and a cramped 180 square feet or so of convenience store-like shelves—yogurts, bags of exotically-flavored freeze-dried peas, refrigerators full of juice, and pre-packaged sandwiches—is a turnstile. It is a shop. I will shop. There’s a reader on the right. There’s an app. This is San Francisco, 2018. There is always an app. Get […] […]
The Self-Driving Startup Teaching Cars to Talk
Every element of Drive.ai’s exterior design—from the color scheme to the location and phrasing of the text—is carefully selected and tested. “We have a lot of opinions and ideas. They are not worth anything unless the user says so,” says design chief Bijit Halder.Drive.ai Horns honk. Hands wave. Lights flash. Fingers fly and eyes meet. This orchestra may seem a mess to anyone stuck in the pit at rush hour, but for the most part, it works. Humans may not excel as drivers when it comes to paying attention or keeping calm, but we’re masters of communication, even when […] […]
Self-Driving Cars Should Look Down, Not Just Ahead
WaveSense ground penetrating radar tech comes out of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, a defense R&D center, and was first deployed to help troops navigate in Afghanistan in 2013. Self-driving cars are like snowbird retirees. Given the freedom to live, or operate, anywhere in the country, they turn their backs on wintry states and flock to the sun. There’s a reason Waymo, Uber, and even grocery story giant, Kroger, are testing their shiny new autonomous vehicles in southwestern cities like Phoenix. Yes, Arizona’s regulations are friendly to them, but the year-round good weather is the major draw. As sophisticated as these […] […]
The “neuropolitics” consultants who hack voters’ brains
Maria Pocovi slides her laptop over to me with the webcam switched on. My face stares back at me, overlaid with a grid of white lines that map the contours of my expression. Next to it is a shaded window that tracks six “core emotions”: happiness, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, and sadness. Each time my expression shifts, a measurement bar next to each emotion fluctuates, as if my feelings were an audio signal. After a few seconds, a bold green word flashes in the window: ANXIETY. When I look back at Pocovi, I get the sense she knows exactly […] […]
EU to fine social media platforms that take more than 1 hour to remove extremist content
The European Union is reportedly planning to impose stricter regulations on social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube , and Twitter over the removal of online terrorist propaganda. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that according to new draft regulations to be published next month, the EU plans to impose fines on companies if terrorist content is not deleted within an hour of posting, abandoning its earlier approach of getting internet platforms to remove such content voluntarily. The upcoming legislation builds on guidelines first prescribed by the EU in March for removal of radicalizing online content within one hour. Following […] […]
Distributed teams are rewriting the rules of office(less) politics
When we think about designing our dream home, we don’t think of having a thousand roommates in the same room with no doors or walls. Yet in today’s workplace where we spend most of our day, the purveyors of corporate office design insist that tearing down walls and bringing more people closer together in the same physical space will help foster better collaboration while dissolving the friction of traditional hierarchy and office politics. But what happens when there is no office at all? This is the reality for Jason Fried, Founder and CEO of Basecamp , and Matt Mullenweg, […] […]
Schools Are Mining Students’ Social Media Posts for Signs of Trouble
Aron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post/Getty Images Aaah, the traditions of a new school year. New teachers, new backpacks, new crushes—and algorithms trawling students’ social media posts. Blake Prewitt, superintendent of Lakeview school district in Battle Creek, Michigan, says he typically wakes up each morning to twenty new emails from a social media monitoring system the district activated earlier this year. It uses keywords and machine learning algorithms to flag public posts on Twitter and other networks that contain language or images that may suggest conflict or violence, and tag or mention district schools or communities. In recent months the alert […] […]
Technofobie of dreigende dystopie?
In China worden grote stappen gezet richting een maatschappij waarin burgers continu worden gevolgd, gemonitord en beoordeeld. Een sociale score moet ervoor zorgen dat men netjes wacht op het stoplicht, vaak op bezoek gaat bij familie en op tijd op het werk verschijnt. Overtredingen leveren strafpunten op en daarmee een lagere score waarmee je minder recht hebt op een goede baan of een appartement. Het is nu nog optioneel, maar in 2020 ontkomt de Chinese burger er niet meer aan. De Volkskrant schrijft in een artikel over de Chinese technologie dat wij, in het westen, nog ‘huiverig’ zijn qua […] […]
Google gebruikt Artificial Intelligence voor het koelsysteem in het datacenter
Datacenters moeten koel zijn, om de servers goed te laten functioneren. De afgelopen jaren werkte Google aan een Artificial Intelligence algoritme die zich kan aanpassen aan een koelsysteem. Koelsysteem Google Nu heeft het algoritme alles onder controle in Google’s datacenter. De AI heeft geleerd om de temperatuur zo optimaal mogelijk te houden, maar wel energie te besparen. De besparing is ongeveer veertig procent. In eerste instantie werden de aanbevelingen van het systeem eerst bekeken en daarna toegepast. Dat kostte veel tijd, en uiteindelijk hebben ze het systeem geautomatiseerd. Er zijn wel altijd opzichters die het systeem in de gaten […] […]
Hubble Captures 15,000 Galaxies in a Single Stunning Image
Early in Hubble’s mission, it scanned a patch of sky for 10 days to collect 342 separate images. When assembled, they became the now-famous Hubble Deep Field. NASA has updated this iconic image over the years as the telescope became more powerful, and it’s doing so again. Hubble may be inching toward obsolescence with the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), but it’s still producing amazing images. The newest panoramic view of the universe shows more galaxies than ever before . According to NASA, the new image features a whopping 15,000 galaxies, and 12,000 of them […] […]