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Daily API RoundUp: Engine Yard, CloudFlare, Plumbr, DeepGram, Proxy Spider
Every day, the ProgrammableWeb team is busy, updating its three primary directories for APIs, clients (language-specific libraries or SDKs for consuming or providing APIs), and source code samples. If you have new APIs, clients, or source code examples to add to ProgrammableWeb's directories, we offer forms (APIs, Clients, Source Code) for submitting them to our API research team. If there's a listing in one of our directories that you'd like to claim as the owner, please contact us at editor@programmableweb.com. Thirteen APIs have been added to the ProgrammableWeb directory in categories such as Natural Language Processing, Security, and Demographics. One highlight today is the DeepGram API which uses artificial intelligence to recognize speech, search for keywords, and categorize audio and video.
The US is crowdsourcing homemade bomb recipes to prevent terrorist attacks
You don't need to be a chemist to make triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, the homemade explosive used in the bombs which killed 35 people and injured hundreds more last week in Brussels, according to one expert. Another calls the process "worryingly easy." The recipe can be found on the Internet, the ingredients -- hydrogen peroxide and acetone -- can be found at any drugstore, and can be mixed using regular kitchen equipment. "For the most part, IED components are commercial goods that are not subject to government export licences and whose transfer is far less scrutinised and regulated than the transfer of weapons," said a February report from the London-based Conflict Armament Research group, which traced the origins of more than 700 components recovered from ISIS bomb factories. In an attempt to head off attacks like those in Brussels, Boston, and scores of other places, the United States government has quietly asked the general public -- from credentialed professionals to "skilled hobbyists" -- to find ways of weaponizing "easily purchased, relatively benign technologies."
COEVOLVE: A Joint Point Process Model for Information Diffusion and Network Co-evolution
Farajtabar, Mehrdad, Wang, Yichen, Rodriguez, Manuel Gomez, Li, Shuang, Zha, Hongyuan, Song, Le
Information diffusion in online social networks is affected by the underlying network topology, but it also has the power to change it. Online users are constantly creating new links when exposed to new information sources, and in turn these links are alternating the way information spreads. However, these two highly intertwined stochastic processes, information diffusion and network evolution, have been predominantly studied separately, ignoring their co-evolutionary dynamics. We propose a temporal point process model, COEVOLVE, for such joint dynamics, allowing the intensity of one process to be modulated by that of the other. This model allows us to efficiently simulate interleaved diffusion and network events, and generate traces obeying common diffusion and network patterns observed in real-world networks. Furthermore, we also develop a convex optimization framework to learn the parameters of the model from historical diffusion and network evolution traces. We experimented with both synthetic data and data gathered from Twitter, and show that our model provides a good fit to the data as well as more accurate predictions than alternatives.
Spectral Clustering – How Math is Redefining Decision Making
In today's world of big data and the internet of things, it is common for a business to find itself sitting atop a mountain of data. Possessing it is one thing, but leveraging it for data driven decision making is a much different ball game. Gut-feelings and institutionalized heuristics have traditionally been used to guide development of protocol and decision making, but the world of artificial intelligence and big disparate data is changing that. Everyone is trying to make sense of, and extract value from, their data. Those that are not will be left behind. This challenge (and opportunity) is not limited to certain industries.
Bank of Russia uses machine learning to identify unlicensed money lenders
The Bank of Russia is using machine learning technology to identify unlicensed money lenders, and the websites hosting them. The technology, developed by Yandex Data Factory, has helped to reveal 2,500 suspicious organisations. The system uses algorithms to search out websites hosting illegal cash loan providers and unregulated financial activity by indexing web pages related to microfinance and consumer loans. Yandex uses keyword analysis across a search index of some seven million web pages related to finance topics. In order to help build the specialised search model, Bank of Russia experts sorted through and categorised 8,000 web pages.
Best April Fool's Day jokes
Sunrise co-host Edwina Bartholemew playing an April Fool's Day prank on Kochie. IT'S April Fool's Day today, and Australian companies have gotten into the spirit by having a lend of their customers in some very creative ways. Sunrise co-host Edwina Bartholemew had Kochie fooled when she announced she was engaged to her long time partner Neil Varcoe today. To carry out the joke she used Natalie Barr's ring and put it on her hand. Australia's online dating site eHarmony, in partnership with WILD LIFE Sydney Zoo in Darling Harbour, announced the launch of aHarmony, a revolutionary new dating platform specifically designed for animals, where pet owners can find fluffy, scaly or even prickly partners using eHarmony's famous Compatibility Matching System.
IBM's brain-mimicking computers are getting bigger brains
IBM says it wants to make intelligent computers that can make decisions like humans. This week, it shipped the NS16e, its largest brain-inspired computer yet, and has big goals ahead. The company plans to create bigger versions of the NS16e--which was purchased by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory--to come closer to matching the scale of a human brain. "Perhaps one day we may see a single rack of neurosynaptic system with as many neurons and synapses as in a human brain," said Jun Sawada, a researcher at IBM, in a blog entry. The brain can be viewed as an extremely power-efficient biological computer.
Google shocked this man by offering sympathy on the death of his father
Last week, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt explained that Google is working on a new generation of super smart "machine learning" apps that will create "something that's better than what humans can do." Today, we bring you a mind-blowing example of that. Reddit user "barney13" was experimenting with all the voice commands in Google Now and Google Photos. He's got an Android phone and pretty much uses all of the Google services, Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Google Now and Google Photos, which automatically uploads and geotags his photos. He was asking Google Now to show him photos from various trips he took.
Untethered and unguided: Our first deep look at HoloLens
After a quick run through with Lorraine Bardeen, GM Windows and HoloLens experiences, I was left alone in the living room to discover the digital information all around me. The juxtaposition of three-dimensional holograms and real objects had created a mixed reality. Interacting with the projections peppered in the room quickly started to feel like some sort of technological hallucination. The holograms were only visible to me. One of the first things I noticed about the headset was its see-through "holographic lens".
Does Stress Speed Up Evolution? - Issue 34: Adaptation
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams' comedic sci-fi series from the 1970s, the Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three are one of the most insecure and angry life forms in the galaxy. They have "impatient chromosomes" that instantly adapt to their surroundings. If they are sitting at a table, for instance, and are unable to reach a coffee spoon, "they are liable without a moment's consideration to mutate into something with far longer arms … but which is probably quite incapable of drinking the coffee." Susan M. Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at Baylor College of Medicine, quotes Adams' "(deliciously) askew" story in a research paper on mutations in evolution as an example of how, according to standard neo-Darwinian theory, evolution does not work. Organisms, all good students know, do not generate rapid genetic mutations in response to their environment. There are exceptions, such as mutations spurred by certain chemicals or radiation.