On the assembly line in Toyota's low-strung, sprawling Georgetown, Kentucky factory, worker ingenuity pops up in the least expected places. Even as the automaker unveils an updated version of its vaunted production system, called the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA), the company has resisted the very modern allure of automation–a particularly contrarian stance to take in the car industry, which is estimated to be responsible for over half of commercial robot purchases in North America. Despite its dry subject, this book had a radical impact inside and outside of the business community–for the first time, unveiling the mysteries of Japanese industrial expertise and popularizing terms like lean production, continuous improvement, andon assembly lines, seven wastes or mudas and product flow. Codified as the Toyota New Global Architecture, this strategy doesn't primarily target labor to reduce production expenses but instead is weighted toward smarter use of materials; reengineering automobiles so their component parts are lighter and more compact and their weight distribution is maxed out for performance and fuel efficiency; more economical global sharing of engine and vehicle models (trimming back more than 100 different platforms to fewer than ten); and a renewed emphasis on elusive lean concepts, such as processes that allow assembly lines to produce a different car one after another with no downtime.

Québec and Ontario held their seventh joint meeting of cabinet ministers in Québec City today, building on a long history of productive partnership between them. The meeting was an opportunity to continue the governments' progress in the areas of innovation, economic growth and climate change. A new step in accelerating the growth of information and communications technology was taken today as Premier Philippe Couillard and Premier Kathleen Wynne announced a new Memorandum of Understanding that will see Québec and Ontario strengthen their cooperation in the development of Artificial Intelligence. Building on existing investments, the agreement will boost the provinces' competitive advantage in the field of AI by expanding opportunities for collaboration in research, talent attraction, skills development and business growth. Together, Ontario and Québec will support advancements in the design and commercialization of innovative technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, speech recognition, fraud detection, and medical imaging and diagnosis.

Police shootings in the US frequently make local and national headlines, but there is no government-run database of the fatalities. So people are turning to machine learning to make sure no shooting by the police goes unrecorded. Working out how many people in the US have been killed as result of police action isn't easy. Where they do exist, official records are somewhat lacking. A 2016 study by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics found that police records cover half as many police-related deaths as media reports.

US President Donald Trump is seeking to loosen some Obama-era limits on drone strikes and ground raids outside conventional war-zones, US media reports have said. The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, reported on Thursday that Trump's top national security advisers have proposed relaxing two rules from administration of Barack Obama, the former US president. The officials said the targets of kill missions by the military and the CIA would be expanded to include foot-soldier fighters with no special skills or leadership roles. The officials added that proposed drone attacks and raids would no longer undergo high-level vetting. The New York Times report comes after NBC News published a story on Monday about the Trump administration contemplating policy changes that will further expand the CIA's authority to conduct drone strikes in a number of countries, both in and out of war-zones.

It's no secret that Google searches for "how to move to Canada" surged after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But there's now new data that Canadian startups are seeing more interest from U.S. workers than ever before, as fist reported by Axios -- and many of them are attributing it to dissatisfaction with U.S. politics. MaRS, an innovation hub in Toronto, asked startups in the city if they've seen a surge in applications from U.S. workers since November. Zoom.ai, an enterprise chatbot startup, went from receiving nearly zero U.S. applications to 33 percent of its applications coming from the U.S. in February. "I've been in tech for over 20 years in Canada and in Silicon Valley, too. I've never seen candidates from the U.S. apply for Canadian positions from places like Silicon Valley," Roy Pereira, the CEO of Zoom.ai, an enterprise chatbot startup, told Axios.

The I-7 Innovators' Strategic Advisory Board on People-Centered Innovation is the engagement group launched last May during the G7 Summit in Taormina (par. The group is in charge of providing guidance on emerging innovation issues. The creation of this group is an experiment proposed by the Italian G7 Presidency with the goal of driving attention towards the multiple challenges that innovation poses and cannot be faced only at national level. Each country and the EU have designated their own group of experts. We encourage Canada to consider continuing this experiment during their imminent Presidency. How can AI help governments make better decisions and deliver policies and services more effectively?

For decades, space agencies around the world have relied on multi-stage rockets to deliver craft and cargo to orbit. But, a ground-breaking new rocket equipped with an'aerospike' engine could soon change that as developers announce it is ready for ground tests. Las Cruces-based company Arca says its Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) rocket dubbed'Haas 2CA' will be able to launch 100 kg (220lbs) of payload to low Earth orbit – and could get there in less than five minutes. Las Cruces-based company Arca says its Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) rocket dubbed'Haas 2CA' will be able to launch 100 kg (220lbs) of payload to low Earth orbit – and could get there in less than 5 minutes. Unlike typical, multi-stage systems, the design means the rocket won't have any additional stages to shed during its deployment Using a linear aerospike engine dubbed the'Executor,' the rocket can auto adapt to the altitude pressure drop, allowing the use of up to 30 percent less fuel.

Smartphones today compete over which can best secure your secrets. They encrypt your data, store the digital keys to unlock themselves on specialized hardware, and even offer fancy biometrics from fingerprints to faceprints. But many millions of smartphones remain open to an absurdly low-tech attack: a sly glance at someone's phone while they unlock it. One new study has quantified just how easy an Android-style unlock pattern--as opposed to a six-digit PIN or biometric unlock--makes the job of any over-the-shoulder snoop. Security researchers at the US Naval Academy and the University of Maryland this week published a study that shows that a casual observer can visually pick up and then reproduce an Android unlock pattern with relative ease. In their tests, they found that six-point Android unlock patterns can be recreated by about two out of three observers who see it performed from five or six feet away after a single viewing.

Artificial intelligence is touching just about every aspect of our lives making cars safer, connecting devices in our homes, changing the way brand marketers engage us with their latest campaigns, and personalizing the latest medical treatments and protocols to improve care. According to Cyberseek, a project managed by the U.S. Department of Commerce to measure cybersecurity talent demands, there are almost 350,000 open cybersecurity jobs available at the time we published this article. Cybersecurity analyst is among the most advertised position online. Every day, security analysts look at an ocean of events gathered from log files. Their job is to identify security threats and determine which events warrant further investigation. A dearth of skilled analysts, combined with an overwhelming array of data from blogs and research papers, makes it difficult to put security events in context.

Drudge has for years used his site as a web traffic pipeline for Russian propaganda sites, directing his massive audience to nearly 400 stories from RT.com and fellow Russian-government-run English-language news sites SputnikNews.com Those numbers spiked in 2016, when Drudge collectively linked to the three sites 122 times. Drudge's increasing affinity for and proliferation of Russian propaganda comes amid what The New York Times calls "a new information war Russia is waging against the West."