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A few weeks ago we suggested you follow 5 topics that cover the more basic aspects of the business of blogging. Today let's focus on something equally important: the life of a blogger. This week I attended MMA SM2 Innovation Summit in New York, which took place during Advertising Week. The lineup of speakers did not disappoint and I gained many new insights. Here are the four that most stuck with me.
Tesla driver injured as car on autopilot crashes into tourist bus in Germany
A Tesla electric car crashed into a tourist bus on a motorway in northern Germany with the driver claiming he had activated the car's autopilot system. The driver of the Tesla car was injured, while the 29 people on board the Danish bus were unhurt in the incident on Wednesday, police in Ratzeburg in Schleswig-Holstein state said. The 50-year-old driver's car hit the bus as it changed lanes outside the northern town of Gudow. Available for Tesla's Model S electric cars since October 2015, the driverless autopilot system has come under global scrutiny following fatal crashes in northern China in January and in the US state of Florida in May (file photo) 'We will now have to look into why the autopilot didn't work to prevent the crash,' police said in a statement. Available for Tesla's Model S electric cars since October 2015, the driverless autopilot system has come under global scrutiny following fatal crashes in northern China in January and in the US state of Florida in May.
NASA's Gecko-Inspired Robots Can Climb Pretty Much Anything
You're so hard to explore. Sometimes you bombard spacecrafts with hurtling rocks and deadly cosmic rays, and other times you're so empty you don't give astronauts a darn thing to hold on to. But while scientists haven't quite figured out how to keep radiation at bay, the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory--specifically, its Planetary Robotics Laboratory--are building machines that can get a grip on the most difficult surfaces astronauts will find out there. Adhesion-wise, space presents a couple problems. First, robots typically struggle with uneven surfaces, let alone the kind of cliffs and crags you see on Mars.
Partnership on AI vs OpenAI: Consolidation of Power vs Open Source
The Partnership on AI consolidates control for a handful of corporations and their stakeholders, pitting them against Elon Musk's OpenAI open source, non-profit that is available to everyone. Both the Partnership on AI and Elon Musk's OpenAI were established to advance humanity through Artificial Intelligence. While Musk's OpenAI was devised to be open and available to the public, the Partnership on AI is more of a consolidation of power that benefits stakeholders whose findings will later be used to enact public policies. Google/DeepMind, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon have collaborated to form the Partnership on AI to "formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field." While third-party groups such as academics, non-profits, and policy specialists have been invited to be on the new Board of Directors, the Partnership on AI ultimately serves the private stakeholders, and whatever the stakeholders dictate will be relayed to the public.
IBM Plans to Buy Promontory Financial Group
International Business Machines Corp. plans to purchase consultancy Promontory Financial Group LLC., the two companies said Thursday, creating a new subsidiary dubbed'Watson Financial Services.' The companies didn't disclose financial details of the deal, which they said is subject to regulatory approvals. The idea, they said, is to combine Promontory's financial regulatory expertise with Watson, IBM IBM 0.61 % 's artificial intelligence computer system, to help banks meet ever-rising regulatory expectations in areas such as anti-money-laundering detection systems, consumer complaint databases, and so-called stress tests. Financial regulatory requirements are "rapidly outstripping the capacity of humans to keep up," a joint press release from the companies said. Privately held Promontory was founded in 2001 by Eugene Ludwig, a former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, and has hired a small army of former regulators and government officials to advise financial firms.
Melissa Joan Hart teases the possible return of 'Clarissa Explains it All'
Clarissa may have been the one to explain it all back in the 1990s but actress Melissa Joan Hart has been explaining plenty herself during a recent string of interviews. Hart, who played a precocious teen girl in Nickelodeon's "Clarissa Explains it All" and a precocious teen witch in ABC and the WB's "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," made headlines recently when she told People that she not only was supporting Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, but she was working as the campaign's Connecticut chairwoman. The actress has been making publicity appearances for the 20th anniversary of "Sabrina," which debuted Sept. 27, 1996, but the juiciest tidbit from Hart's latest spate of interviews isn't about "Sabrina" but about "Clarissa." When asked by Us Weekly about the possibility of a reboot of either series, Hart waved off the thought of returning to her teenage witchy ways. But when it came to "Clarissa," Hart said, "There is some talk about'Clarissa,' so we'll see which way that goes."
Package-Delivery Drones Likely Years Away From Federal Approval
Despite escalating industry pressure for approval of package-delivery drones, safety experts and federal documents indicate widespread flights aren't likely before the next decade. U.S. aviation authorities only recently kicked off the formal, time-consuming process of defining the types of collision-avoidance systems considered essential for such operations to receive broad regulatory authorization. Drafting the technical standards is projected to take three or four years, envisioning a suite of ground-based and airborne sensors that haven't yet been developed. Even strong proponents of unmanned aerial vehicles predict that delivering packages to individual customers probably won't gain significant momentum until at least roughly 2020. "It's not outside the realm of possibility that by the end of the decade, we could see more routine uses" of package-delivery drones, according to Paul McDuffee, co-chair of the federal standards-setting panel and a high-ranking official with Boeing Co. BA -0.13 % 's drone-making unit, Insitu Inc.
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Machine learning and AI could be the key to protecting enterprise IT from advancing cybersecurity threats, Cylance CEO Stuart McClure said on Tuesday. McClure's company, which bills itself as "advanced threat protection for the endpoint," uses machine learning to analyze massive amounts of data in an organization and classifies that data automatically. Cylance, in offering breach protection, is often confused with legacy anti-virus software, McClure said. The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) eventually brought Cylance in to help them work on the early days of what would eventually be determined to be a massive breach.
Can a computer tell if you're RACIST? Algorithm can detect hidden prejudice from a person's body language
While many people have prejudices against certain groups, it can often be easy to hide these in public. But a new computer programme may soon be able to reveal these hidden biases. Researchers have created a programme that scrutinises people's body language for signs of racial prejudice. Researchers have created a programme that scrutinises people's body language for signs of racial prejudice. Researchers from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy wanted to see if an algorithm could accurately predict if someone was racist.
How the new age of antivirus software will protect your PC
Antivirus software ain't what it used to be. The sneaky, sophisticated security threats your PC faces now have gone far beyond what traditional software can do. The future of protecting your PC will require a multi-pronged approach involving vigilant updates, bug bounties, and artificial intelligence. Like any software, antivirus is susceptible to bugs. Earlier this summer, Google's Project Zero discovered serious flaws in enterprise and consumer products from Symantec that allowed malicious actors to take control of a computer.