"This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation," the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that "other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology's utility." Reuters pieced together how the company's initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems' deployment. Most current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared jeopardizing their careers. While Rite Aid declined to disclose which locations used the technology, Reuters found facial recognition cameras at 33 of the 75 Rite Aid shops in Manhattan and the central Los Angeles metropolitan area during one or more visits from October through July. The cameras were easily recognizable, hanging from the ceiling on poles near store entrances and in cosmetics aisles.

When a young girl came to New York University (NYU) Langone Health for a routine follow-up, tests seemed to show that the medulloblastoma for which she had been treated a few years earlier had returned. The girl's recurrent cancer was found in the same part of brain as before, and the biopsy seemed to confirm medulloblastoma. With this diagnosis, the girl would begin a specific course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But just as neuropathologist Matija Snuderl was about to sign off on the diagnosis and set her on that treatment path, he hesitated. The biopsy was slightly unusual, he thought, and he remembered a previous case in which what was thought to be medulloblastoma turned out to be something else. So, to help him make up his mind, Snuderl turned to a computer.

An ultra-fast camera has captured a video of light as it bounces between mirrors. Although light isn't normally visible in flight, some photons from a laser pulse will scatter off particles in the air and can be picked up by a camera. Using these photons to recreate the pulse's trajectory is difficult, because by the time they reach the camera, the pulse has moved to a new location. Edoardo Charbon at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues used a camera with a shutter speed of about a trillionth of a second to take pictures and video of a laser beam following a 3D path. Knowing exactly how long the pulse took to get to the camera, along with the pulse's trajectory in a flat plane, allowed a machine learning algorithm to reconstruct the entire 3D path of the burst of light.

Picture this: You use your hotel's app on your phone to ask for extra towels. Your phone rings and you hear that your delivery is ready. Open the door and you find a 3-foot-tall bellhop has arrived with your linens. Were you picturing a robot? Because at certain Hilton and Marriott hotels across California, a robot is what you'd find.

Journalism involves the search for and critical analysis of information.18 How journalists discover and select sources of this information is important to avoid bias, to be credible and trusted, and to create angles with which to generate new stories of value to readers. Journalist creative thinking, to discover and generate new associations during this search and analysis of information, contributes to the generation of new stories. Journalists are known to seek opportunities to develop new creative skills with which to discover information.17 Applying these skills enables journalists to maintain control over their work.25 However, discovering and examining information sources about complex stories takes time--time that journalists increasingly lack as news organizations reduce staff numbers.22 The digitalization of news production and consumption has led many news businesses to become uncompetitive.

Chips designed specifically to model the neurons and synapses in the human brain are poised to change computing in profound ways.

Cybersecurity researchers revealed on Thursday a newfound vulnerability in an app that controls the world's most popular consumer drones, threatening to intensify the growing tensions between China and the United States. In two reports, the researchers contended that an app on Google's Android operating system that powers drones made by China-based Da Jiang Innovations, or DJI, collects large amounts of personal information that could be exploited by the Beijing government. The world's largest maker of commercial drones, DJI has found itself increasingly in the cross hairs of the United States government, as have other successful Chinese companies. The Pentagon has banned the use of its drones, and in January the Interior Department decided to continue grounding its fleet of the company's drones over security fears. DJI said the decision was about politics, not software vulnerabilities.

The burger chain White Castle announced a partnership Wednesday with the California-based startup Miso Robotics to introduce Flippy, a kitchen robot that flips patties and cooks fries.

That could cost you – in fact, the algorithms they use may be biased against you, or at least your travel plans. This is according to a study by George Washington University published last month. The report found that passengers being picked up or dropped off in lower-income communities or in sectors with minorities were being charged more per mile. "Uber determines demand for rides using machine learning models, using forecasting based on prior demand to determine which areas drivers will be needed most at a given time," reads the study by Aylin Caliskan and Akshat Pandey. "While the use of machine learning to forecast demand may improve ride-hailing applications' ability to provide services to their riders, machine learning methods have been known to adopt policies that display demographic disparity in online recruitment, online advertisements, and recidivism prediction."