In 1998, The Truman Show told the story of a man whose life, unbeknownst to him, is a phenomenally elaborate reality television show. Every day and around the clock, every move made by the hapless Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is captured by a network of hidden cameras and broadcast live worldwide for the entertainment of millions. And then Truman begins to notice discrepancies. "Things that don't fit," he says, in the original script. Twenty years later, The Truman Show writer Andrew Niccol frequently experiences what he calls Trumanesque moments. Sloppy art direction and set design. And he doesn't mean anything happening on a set or on a screen. "There'll be a traffic jam, for instance, for no reason," Niccol says. "In my mind, the reason is actually that Christof"--the all-powerful, demiurge director of The Truman Show--"isn't ready at the next set. Or when you see someone out of context. And you realize, oh my god, that person was in the hospital scene. Today, we are all Truman, our ...

In December of 2012, Su-In Lee was working at the University of Washington in Seattle. One day, she got the kind of call everyone fears: Her father, Cheol Lee, was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer, a rare and aggressive form of the disease. By the time he was diagnosed, his cancer had already spread to other organs. "It was a surprise to our family," Lee said on the newest episode of GeekWire's Health Tech Podcast. "The next day I just went back to Korea and met his doctor and then found that it's incurable, especially in that stage." Not only was his cancer incurable, there actually isn't a single drug designed to treat it.

Lonely hearts out there, rejoice--soon Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid, and The League won't be your only options for frittering awaytime in your search for love. At its annual developer conference on Tuesday, Facebook revealed that the social media giant is entering the already crowded field of dating apps. "This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships -- not just for hookups," CEO Mark Zuckerberg joked, seemingly side-eyeing everyone's favorite time-suck, Tinder. While "Dating for Facebook" will be opt-in only, the rollout of a plan for a dating app amid the company's huge privacy scandal managed to raise some eyebrows. In an apparent effort to ward off criticism, Zuckerberg immediately addressed concerns that might arise around melding the app you use to see photos of your third cousin's new baby with your dating profile.

We would like to talk to you a little bit about deep learning. Some experts are predicting the dawn of a new era, which will also lead to the development of a wholly new set of software. What do you think of such predictions? What would this software 2.0 be like? Uwe Friedrichsen: I think that right now the magic crystal ball is still very cloudy; a prognosis is still difficult to make from my point of view.

For International Girls in ICT Day, and a few weeks ahead of the AI for Good Global Summit, ITU News caught up with Sarah Porter, CEO and Founder of InspiredMinds, World Summit AI, Intelligent Health, and Ada-AI, a non-profit dedicated to ensuring AI benefits all. Sarah is a humanitarian first-response trauma medic, ambassador for the Royal Marsden hospital in London and speaker for the United Nations on Lethal Autonomous Weapons. When I saw the story that a team of young girls from Afghanistan had against all odds made a robot but were then refused their visa [to attend an international robotics contest], it made me realise just how fortunate the Global North is with their right to free education in many disciplines including Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), unlimited access to wifi, and opportunities to learn how to code. The rapid progression of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the wealthy corporations risks excluding the sectors of society that need it the most. Not only are women a minority in STEM education and in the tech teams building AI, the Global South is under-represented.

Here I offer a few off-the-beaten-path interesting problems that you won't find in textbooks, data science camps, or in college classes. These problems range from applied maths, to statistics and computer science, and are aimed at getting the novice interested in a few core subjects that most data scientists master. The problems are described in simple English and don't require math / stats / probability knowledge beyond high school level. My goal is to attract people interested in data science, but who are somewhat concerned by the depth and volume of (in my opinion) unnecessary mathematics included in many curricula. I believe that successful data science can be engineered and deployed by scientists coming from other disciplines, who do not necessarily have a deep analytical background yet are familiar with data.

In an earlier blog, we talked about how machine learning is used in social media analytics. In this post, we're going to review machine learning (ML) basics and examples, and explore some of the areas you might be unaware of where ML is having a significant impact. "Evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence, machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data." The goal of ML is pretty simple -- teach computer systems to perform a task. The computer system gains experience by observing patterns from examples rather than being programmed with explicit instructions or rules.

Facebook has fired a security engineer after he was accused of stalking women online possibly by abusing his "privileged access" to data, raising renewed concerns about users' privacy at the social network. The controversy, which came to light after the employee allegedly called himself a "professional stalker" in a message to a woman he met on Tinder, is particularly bad timing for Facebook, which announced this week that it is launching an online dating feature while it continues to battle a major privacy scandal in the US and the UK. Facebook confirmed to the Guardian that the employee was terminated, but it did not provide any details on his position or the data he may have accessed, saying in a statement it was "investigating this as a matter of urgency". The allegations emerged on Sunday in tweets from Jackie Stokes, founder of the cybersecurity consultancy Spyglass Security, who said she learned that "a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely using privileged access to stalk women online". I really, really hope I'm wrong about this.

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible.

How did you first get started in the international health insurance industry, and how did you come to be in your current role? My first job was for broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson, where I gravitated towards the Accident and Health division, focusing mainly on international risk. Over the years, I have worked in a number of strategic business development roles for some of the leading insurance businesses including Lloyd's and Aon. When headhunted for this role, I was aware of second medical opinion services and Best Doctors – it felt like the perfect opportunity, not only to be involved with a leading provider in the sector but also to be involved in a market that had such potential for growth and still has. In addition, having had a family member with a serious medical condition, I could see the value proposition and I liked the idea of helping to make a difference for other families in similar situations.