Andrew Studer was admiring a massive lava fire hose at Hawaii Volcanoes national park when he spotted something unusual: a small quadcopter drone flying very close to the natural wonder pouring hot molten rock. "There were other visitors sitting out relaxing in somewhat of a meditative state, just trying to enjoy this phenomenon," said Studer, who recently captured a viral image of a drone hovering near the lava. "I do feel like drones are extremely obnoxious, and I'm sure it was frustrating for some of the people there." In recent years, there have been growing concerns about technology invading national parks, with drones and other noisy gadgets disrupting wilderness areas, wildlife habitats and other recreational areas. While the boom in drones has increasingly spoiled the natural sound that the National Park Service (NPS) is charged with protecting, there has also been a rising number of reports of social media use leading hikers to snap inappropriate and dangerous selfies, threatening wildlife and the environment in the process.

A lawsuit by Waymo, alleging the use by rival Uber Technologies of stolen trade secrets relating to autonomous vehicle technology, has been referred by a federal judge to a U.S. attorney, raising the possibility of a criminal prosecution. "This case is referred to the United States Attorney for investigation of possible theft of trade secrets based on the evidentiary record supplied thus far concerning plaintiff Waymo LLC's claims for trade secret misappropriation," wrote Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California late Thursday. "The Court takes no position on whether a prosecution is or is not warranted, a decision entirely up to the United States Attorney," Judge Alsup added. In another order, the Judge also rejected Uber's motion that most of the claims of the lawsuit should be settled through arbitration, a process that is usually conducted in private, and is cheaper and faster than a federal lawsuit. The dispute in the autonomous vehicle technology market reflects the stiff competition to get driverless vehicles in the hands of consumers.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, a self-driving Uber car stops at a red light on Liberty Avenue through the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In just a few years, well-mannered self-driving robotaxis will share the roads with reckless, law-breaking human drivers. The prospect is causing migraines for the people developing the robocars and is slowing their development. But experts say eventually the cars will coexist with human drivers on real roads.

Anthony Levandowski, shown here during a briefing at a garage owned by his self-driving truck company Otto, which Uber bought in 2016. The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a criminal investigation into Uber's use of a software tool that helped its drivers evade local transportation regulators, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters. SAN FRANCISCO -- Uber suffered a potentially major setback in a court case that could affect the development of self-driving cars Thursday night when the judge referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for an investigation into the possible theft of trade secrets by an Uber executive. In the ruling, Judge William Alsup said the case must stay in court and not go to a private arbitrator as Uber had wanted. "The court takes no position on whether a prosecution is or is not warranted, a decision entirely up to the United States Attorney," Alsup wrote in his order.

The federal judge overseeing a trade secret dispute between Uber and the Google spin-off Waymo has recommended that federal prosecutors begin a criminal investigation into the alleged theft of Waymo's self-driving car technology. Judge William Alsup's referral of the case to the US attorney came amid a flurry of orders in the contentious lawsuit between two Silicon Valley giants. Alsup also denied Uber's attempt to force the case into arbitration and partially granted Waymo's request for a preliminary injunction against Uber. The details of the preliminary injunction are sealed, so it is unclear to what extent Uber will be affected by the order. Waymo had sought to compel the return of its documents and to bar Uber from using lidar technology it said was stolen.

In the latest bad news for Uber, the judge presiding over its trade secrets lawsuit with Google self-driving car unit Waymo has asked federal prosecutors to investigate the case. Reuters and Bloomberg report that US District Judge William Alsup said he is not taking a position on whether or not charges are warranted. At the same time, he denied a request by Uber to take the case to private arbitration, opting to keep things in the public eye, and also partially granted Waymo's request for an injunction. That ruling is under seal, for now, but Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the center of the case, has said he's recusing himself from LiDAR-related work while the case is ongoing. That technology, which allows self-driving vehicles to see where they're going, is what Waymo claims he took, and if Uber has to start over it could cost the company years of time.

WASHINGTON/TORONTO U.S. intelligence officials told a Congressional committee on Thursday they are reviewing government use of software from Russia's Kaspersky Lab as senators raised concerns that Moscow might use the product to attack American computer networks.

Artificial intelligence is helping farmers, doctors and rescue workers improve their positive impact on society. Artificial intelligence (AI) powers many gadgets, like smartphones, smart thermostats and voice-activated virtual assistants that bring modern conveniences to daily life. Increasingly, AI is also being used to tackle critical social challenges. AI is a branch of computer science where machines can sense, learn, reason, act and adapt to the real world, amplifying human capabilities and automating tedious or dangerous tasks. Some experts believe AI has the potential to spark a serious social revolution.

Hi Mehran, I'm Burak for Turkey and I'll try to make an impression on you, about ANN and Time Series, If I can of course:) When I was working on my graduate thesis at collage, I used to Backpropagation Network with Delta Bar Delta weight updating algorithm (offline and supervized learning). I forecast; Turkish Lira / USD Exchange Rates (Period: Daily, Range: 2002-2005 for Training, 2005-2006 for forecasting) I programmed this network on Visual Basic.Net and I'll tray to give an abstract of my results in here. I used many of types of ANNs and I decided to best way of the forecasting of time series are Feedforward Backpropagation Networks. And yes there are absolutely significant differences between ANN and other techniques espicially "When the relations of series are both not linear and unseenable easily" In Accordance With: Mean Error Criteria In Accordance With: Mean Absolute Error Criteria In Accordance With: Mean Squared Error Criteria In Accordance With: Mean Percentage Error Criteria In Accordance With: Mean Absolute Percentage Error Criteria I have given the most useful criterias that uses to performance analyzing of forecast. I hope you have the information about this criterias and you'll able to make comparsion of ANN and other models.

Automation and artificial intelligence are poised to free up millions of hours of manpower and save billions of dollars across all levels of government, according to a recent report from Deloitte University Press. The 28-page report, titled AI-augmented Government, examines several case studies, provides a taxonomy of AI systems, and concludes that in the federal government alone, automation with "high investment" could free up as many as 1.2 billion hours of work and save up to $41.1 billion annually. Through the use of rules-based systems, machine translation, computer vision, machine learning, robotics and natural language processing, the report notes the unusual but "tantalizing" paradigm presented by AI in which speed is increased, quality is improved, and cost is reduced -- all in parallel. Researchers said they identified a potential 30 percent savings in government worker time that could happen within five to seven years of implementing an AI solution. The report concludes that AI will fundamentally change how every level of government works, and will do so much sooner than most people believe.