Europe
1920s robot makes comeback
Britain's first robot was a dazzling sight to behold, with broad shoulders, light-bulb eyes and a thick-barreled chest. On Sept. 20, 1928, Eric, as the robot was named, was unveiled before members of the Society for Model Engineers' annual convention. Weighing more than half a ton and requiring 35,000 volts of electricity, the impressive figure fascinated audiences. Eric then embarked on a tour that took him around the world, and the futuristic bot became an international sensation. But years later, Eric was lost, and his fate remains a mystery.
Apple App Store to undergo complete overhaul, with ads and subscriptions for games
Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display
Has YOUR Twitter account been hacked? 32 million passwords are on sell on the dark web just a weeks after LinkedIn data breach
It might be time to consider changing your Twitter password. According to LeakedSource, a site that keeps a database of leaked login credentials, 32,888,300 Twitter usernames and passwords have been hacked and put up for sale on the dark web. The details were most likely obtained through individual malware attacks, instead of an attack on the social media site itself, according to the website. According to LeakedSource, a site that keeps a database of leaked login credentials, 32,888,300 Twitter usernames and passwords have been hacked and put up for sale on the dark web. The words malware, comes from a combination of the words'malicious' and'software'.
From AI to Brexit: What London's Android developers are talking about right now
Denis Poroy/Getty Images London entrepreneurs have a constructive debate over the relative methods of taking venture capital versus bootstrapping your business. The city's tech scene is at a pivotal moment, continuing to boom even as the country debate's its future in the European Union, a decision which will have huge implications for the future health of the industry. Meanwhile, radical new formats and mediums are starting to be explored in earnest, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality. At Google's annual I/O Extended event in London, Business Insider sat down with a handful of exciting London Android developers and CEOs, from luxury smartphone business Vertu to fast-growing language learning app startup Memrise. We wanted to hear what they're excited -- and worried -- about over the year ahead.
US intelligence wants real-time behavior monitoring software
In an announcement, IARPA officials laid out the project's goals: "The DIVA program will produce a common framework and software prototype for activity detection, person/object detection and recognition across a multicamera network," IARPA officials wrote. "The impact will be the development of tools for forensic analysis, as well as real-time alerting for user-defined threat scenarios." In other words: the system should be able to identify suspicious behavior in real-time. One of the problems with existing systems is that they can identify individual people or objects, but not many of them at the same time, or the complex interactions between them. The DIVA system as it is proposed would be able to identify certain types of movements like a person carrying a firearm, two people exchanging an object, or someone walking up and abandoning a potentially dangerous object on the street.
Spotify Plots Path to Profit with Machine Learning Tactics
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) โ Spotify is a household name, with more paying users than any other music-streaming service in the world. But it doesn't make a penny. Those 30 million paid subscribers help it rake in almost half the revenues in the global industry. But most of the money goes to record labels and artists, while the privately owned Swedish company faces growing competition from Apple with its deep pockets and massive iPhone user base. To reduce its dependence on labels and stand apart from rivals, Spotify is broadening beyond its music library.
Customer tracking and AI robots top Domino's digital innovations list
Tracking consumers in real-time, zero-click ordering and delivering pizzas via artificially intelligent robots are just some of the latest innovations underway at Domino's. The pizza retailer today launched the first in a proposed series of tech innovation events, under the brand'Abacus', showcasing the way digital and technology is being harnessed by the business. Ten innovations were detailed, some of which will be available from next week, while others will be rolled out over the coming 12-24 months.All stemmed from the theme'time is the enemy of food' and showed the power of harnessing data analytics not only for operational process improvements, but also for tailoring customer experiences and interaction. The first of these is On-Time Cooking, an extension of the GPS Driver Tracker capabilities Domino's has been providing for the last 10 years aimed at shortening the time between cooking a pizza and when customers pick up their order. Domino's A/NZ managing director, Don Meij, said that until now, stores haven't known exactly when a customer will arrive, running the risk of pizzas sitting on the rack for 10 or 20 minutes longer than they should.
BMW hires AI, machine learning experts for R&D
MUNICH (Reuters) โ BMW is overhauling its research and development activities to focus on self-driving cars, board member Klaus Froehlich told Reuters, a move which includes a revamp of its "i" sub-brand of carbon-fibre based electric vehicles. The company is updating its zero-emission vehicles after a lackluster response to its only fully battery-powered car, the i3, which recorded only 25,000 sales last year. By contrast, Tesla already has more than 370,000 orders for its Model 3. To help improve sales, BMW is increasing the battery range of its i3 city vehicle by 50 percent this year. Its next full-fledged new electric car model is not due until 2021, but the Bavarian auto maker is also planning to build a new version of its i3 electric car to be released by 2018, a source familiar with the matter said. "It is a sportier brother for the i3," said the source, who declined to be named.
Announcing - AI / Deep Learning Lab for Future Cities - at University of Madrid โ Data Science Central
We welcome call for Papers - please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com if you are interested in the below Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning technologies are impacting many aspects of our lives. In future, this impact is expected to accelerate to many more areas including Smart cities. To address them through AI technologies, we need to think beyond the current silo-based approach. We need to look to the interconnections between city areas. Most importantly, we wish to engage with new ideas in an'agile' way.
Adidas uses robots to bring shoe production back to Germany
The Financial Times is reporting that Adidas is going to bring back production to its native Germany for the first time in 30 years. It's spent the last six months testing a robotic factory with automated production lines creating soles and uppers separately before stitching them together. Spurred on by the results, the company is working on a large facility near Ansbach which will begin making sneakers for sale at some point next year. Another facility will be built in the US, although both are expected to produce just a tiny fraction of the 301 million pairs the firm made last year. The paper explains that a robot production line takes about five hours to create each pair of sneakers from scratch. By comparison, it apparently takes "several weeks" to do the same job in an Asian factory with human workers.