SpotMini, the robotic dog and social media sensation, is looking for a job. Boston Dynamics, the company behind the cybernetic canine, excels at two things: designing cool robots, and making viral videos of them in action. SpotMini has racked up an impressive 30 million YouTube views in just a few years, and a photo of the robot strolling… Read more »
Monthly Archives: August 2018
This Startup Slices the World Into 57 Trillion Squares
in the surrounding area, more than 400,000 others inhabit mud huts, one-room cinder block bungalows, or ramshackle brick structures at citrus plantations and informal farms along roads that wind through the bush. Nikki Stuart-Thompson serves these people with a nonprofit that provides health care to the poor. But before she can help them, she needs… Read more »
Toyota to invest $500m in Uber in driverless car deal
Japanese carmaker Toyota is to invest $500m (£387m) in Uber and expand a partnership to jointly develop self-driving cars. The firm said this would involve the “mass-production” of autonomous vehicles that would be deployed on Uber’s ride sharing network. It is being viewed as a way for both firms to catch up with rivals in… Read more »
Cholera epidemic ‘controlled’ by computer predictions
Cholera cases in Yemen have been slashed by a new system that predicts where outbreaks will occur. Last year, there were more than 50,000 new cases in just one week – this year, the numbers plummeted to about 2,500. The system has enabled aid workers to focus efforts on prevention several weeks in advance of… Read more »
The blockchain bonanza is over for graphics card makers
The image above is of a cryptomining rig For almost a year, cryptocurrency miners have snapped up all the graphics cards they could get their hands on. That was a financial windfall for Nvidia and AMD, the leading makers of consumer graphics cards. Both reported soaring profits their last two quarters. But on Thursday, Nvidia reported its financial… Read more »
Expiration of Major Cybersex Patent Could Set Off Explosive Innovation
This week marked a major milestone for the more than $15 billion adult toy industry, with the expiration of a longstanding patent on sex toys controlled over the internet. The patent has been held in recent years by a company widely regarded as a ‘patent troll,’ focused not on developing usable technology, but instead on… Read more »
Is AI more than just a buzzword?
Artificial Intelligence – a rapidly advancing technology promising to transform whole industries in the next five years with profound implications for how we live and work. Or, as we hear on this week’s Tech Tent, a massively overhyped buzzword for quite a mundane field of computer science which has not made any great leap forward… Read more »
The extinct tech you forgot existed
A recent study has revealed which kinds of tech have stood the test of time – in terms of recognition, if not use. Source: BBC Future Date: August 20th, 2018 Link (to a gallery of 10 items): http://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180816-do-you-recognise-these-obsolete-technologies Discussion 1) “More than five billion floppy disks were sold per year worldwide at their peak in the mid-1990s” –… Read more »
Deepfakes are coming. Is Big Tech ready?
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been moving recently to deal with the threats posed by misinformation and meddling that they didn’t see coming, but now they face an emerging form of disinformation they know is on the horizon: Deepfakes — doctored videos that will eventually fool even the sharpest eyes. As the technology to create… Read more »
Artificial Intelligence Is Coming for Hiring, and It Might Not Be That Bad
Artificial intelligence promises to make hiring an unbiased utopia. There’s certainly plenty of room for improvement. Employee referrals, a process that tends to leave underrepresented groups out, still make up a bulk of companies’ hires. Recruiters and hiring managers also bring their own biases to the process, studies have found, often choosing people with the “right-sounding” names and educational background…. Read more »
Recent Comments