Yield curve forecasting is an important problem in finance. In this work we explore the use of Gaussian Processes in conjunction with a dynamic modeling strategy, much like the Kalman Filter, to model the yield curve. Gaussian Processes have been successfully applied to model functional data in a variety of applications. A Gaussian Process is used to model the yield curve. The hyper-parameters of the Gaussian Process model are updated as the algorithm receives yield curve data. Yield curve data is typically available as a time series with a frequency of one day. We compare existing methods to forecast the yield curve with the proposed method. The results of this study showed that while a competing method (a multivariate time series method) performed well in forecasting the yields at the short term structure region of the yield curve, Gaussian Processes perform well in the medium and long term structure regions of the yield curve. Accuracy in the long term structure region of the yield curve has important practical implications. The Gaussian Process framework yields uncertainty and probability estimates directly in contrast to other competing methods. Analysts are frequently interested in this information. In this study the proposed method has been applied to yield curve forecasting, however it can be applied to model high frequency time series data or data streams in other domains.

Ride hailing company Uber Technologies has for years used a secret tool to deceive the authorities in markets where its service faced resistance by law enforcement or was banned, the New York Times reported, citing sources. An Uber tool called Greyball used data collected from the Uber app and other methods to find and circumvent officials, the NYT reported on Friday. The service was able to show them a fake app populated with'ghost' cars and cancel their rides. Uber has for years used a secret tool to deceive the authorities in markets where its service faced resistance by law enforcement or was banned, the New York Times has claimed. In one example, Uber was able to create a'fake' service to fool investigators.

The feature, which was first showcased at Google I/O last spring, was initially made available only to Google Pixel phone users, but as of this week, Google announced that many more Android users will be enjoying Google Assistant. The feature began rolling out to Nougat and Marshmallow devices the week of February 26 and continues to become available to more users every day. If you have an Android device and want to get Google Assistant working on it but aren't sure how, we've put together a comprehensive guide of everything you need to know to activate and begin using Google Assistant on your device. Google's virtual assistant has begun rolling out to more users this week. Find out if your device is compatible.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Enjoy today's videos, and let us know if you have suggestions for next week. This is one of the best things I have ever seen. In this video we present a new safety module for robots to ensure safety for different tools in collaborative tasks. This module, filled with air pressure during the robot motion, covers mounted tools and carried workpieces.

Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp., believes that within 30 years, artificial intelligence will be smarter than the human brain. The Wall Street Journal reports that Son made the prediction at Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry's biggest trade show, which is currently being held in Barcelona, Spain. Not only does Son think that super smart robots will outnumber humans in 30 years, but more than a trillion objects will be connected to the internet. "That is why I'm in a hurry to aggregate cash to invest," he said. SoftBank has made quite a few recent deals, including purchasing British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion, as well as U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion. Son plans to ramp up the research-and-development funding for ARM, which designs the basic architecture for chips in more than 95 percent of smartphones around the world.

Bolivia may be one of the cocaine capitals of the world – but don't you dare call it a narco state. The Bolivian government complained to France after a French video game publisher, Ubisoft, developed a game that highly offended the South American nation. The popular game, "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands," revolves around a Mexican drug cartel that controls Bolivia and has turned the country into a violent narco-state. The game is set to be officially launched next week, but the game's beta version has already been downloaded by 6.8 million users. Bolivian Interior Minister Carlos Romero said the Andean nation delivered a letter to the French ambassador earlier this week and asked French officials to intervene.

A woman is selling an extremely rare 1970s IBM computer like that which helps power the US nuclear system. Faith Warner, 38, decided to auction off the huge Series 1 machine after it spent decades gathering dust in her garage. She says the computer model originally sold for anything between £100,000 to £150,000 - but she has listed it on Ebay with a modest starting price of £5,000. Ms Warner said: 'My dad used to run an engineering firm but in his spare time he wrote for a PC magazine and loved collecting old technology that he would try to fix. 'My father died six years ago and over the years my mum has got rid of some bits and the collection has dwindled - but this one was left behind, mainly because it's so big.' Ms Warner, who runs a retreat in north Devon, researched the IBM Series 1 after uncovering it under a tarpaulin two years ago.

A smartphone app that uses deep learning lets people with Parkinson's disease test their symptoms at home in just 4 minutes. The app could help people monitor the disease's progression more closely, and uncover how lifestyle factors may affect their symptoms. "There's very little understanding as to how Parkinson's arises, and patients say that every day the condition is different," says George Roussos at Birkbeck, University of London. People report symptom changes related to everything from exercise to socialising to diet, but it's not yet possible to build a solid picture of how these factors interact. "To understand these differences, we need to monitor the condition regularly, in a quick and easy way, over a long period of time," says Roussos.

Ten years on from its first 1.0 release, OpenCV (Short for Open Computer Vision) is a C library that lets you create software with real-time computer vision. Originally developed in Russia for Intel, it's fully open source and includes machine learning. It's BSD licensed so can be used freely. This is a very large library, with over 200 MB in various DLLs though you can also statically link to it if you prefer. It has several hundred algorithms in C with C, Python, Java and MATLAB interfaces and runs on Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and Mac OS.